Chapter 1 -3.docx

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet [1].

Precursors to the web browser emerged in the form of hyperlinked applications during the mid and late 1980s, and following these, Tim Berners-Lee is credited with developing in 1990 both the first web server, and the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb (no spaces) and later renamed Nexus. Many others were soon developed, with Marc

Andreessen's 1993 Mosaic (later Netscape), being particularly easy to use and install, and often credited with sparking the internet boom of the 1990s. Today, the major web browsers are Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari[2].

The first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was developed in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee for the NeXT Computer (at the same time as the first web server for the same machine) and

introduced to his colleagues at CERN in March 1991.[3] Like much of the Internet, the World Wide Web operates on a client/server model. You run a web client on your computer-called a web browser-such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Firefox. That client contacts a web server and requests information or resources. The web server locates and then sends the information to the web browser, which displays the result [4].

This project is all about developing an internet web browser with a programming language called Visual Basic.Net. With this language, we are going to build an advanced web browser similar to those in existence today.

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Statement of the Problem

After a careful research, it has been noted that most web browser in existence use a lot of data for background processes. Data is been charged for processes the user is not accessing or is not aware which leads to a data waste. Hence this project will make use of miniaturized version of web which will minimize data consumption and will notify the user if there is need to allow some background process to make use of data.

Aim & Objectives of the Study

The aim of this project is to develop a web browser using Visual Studio.Net software and Visual Basic.Net Language to support the global community of browsing and surfing the internet.

The objectives are:

1.

To build a web browser that will minimize data consumption 2.

To build a web browser that gives the user complete access and control of the web

Methodology

A web browser will be built using Visual Basic.Net language. Visual Basic.Net is a object oriented programming language i.e they are event driven. The software to be used is Visual Studio.Net. Visual Studio.Net is the only available software for Visual Basic.Net.

Scope of the Study

A windows desktop web browser is a software application that gives individuals/ users the ability to access the internet and share information. A web browser has become so important that it changes the way people look at communication. It also changes the method of communicating with each other.

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Limitation of the Study 1. The web browser can be operated only on a windows platform.

2. The web browser will not receive updates and plug-ins.

3. The web browser will not show the progress of a loading website. Introduction

From the beginning to end, this project went through a series of small, but necessary changes. When we began the programming of the code and the design of the interface, we came to realize there were quite a few aspects of our design from our original proposal that were simply too ambitious. For example, we are to use VB.NET code to design the interface and a rotary context menu but discovered that there is more to the rotary context menu that what we know or can know. We also combined skills together to make a very interactive user interface as proposed.

History of a Web Browser

Precursors to the web browser emerged in the form of hyperlinked applications during the mid and late 1980s, and following these, Tim Berners-Lee is credited with developing in 1990 both the first web server, and the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb ( instant logon and access to the online catalogs of over 5000 libraries around the world.

The strength of Hytelnet was speed and simplicity in link creation/execution at the expense of a centralized worldwide source for adding, indexing, and modifying telnet links. This problem was solved by the invention of the web server [10].

Features of a Web Browser

One Bing (3%) -Product of Microsoftgaining some in popularity.

Search Engine

USAGE -One can set the desired search engine within the web browser. It can be easily changed by the user and is often inadvertently changed when installing certain software programs. The software may include an option to use a certain search engine as the

Architecture of a Web Browser

Using the source code and available documentation for two different web browsers, reference architecture was derived for the web browser domain. Two mature browser implementations were selected and, for each browser, a conceptual architecture was proposed based on domain knowledge and available documentation.

The concrete architecture of each system was then extracted from its source code, using the QLDX, a reverse engineering toolkit, and used to refine the conceptual architecture.

Reference architecture was then proposed based on the common structure of these refined architectures, and it was validated against two other browser implementations. The reference architecture comprises of eight major subsystems plus the dependencies between them:

(1) The User Interface;

(2) The Browser Engine, an embeddable component that provides a high-level interface for querying and manipulating the Rendering Engine;

(3) The Rendering Engine, which performs parsing and layout for HTML documents, optionally styled with CSS;

(4) The Networking subsystem; 9 (5) The JavaScript Interpreter;

(6) The XML Parser;

(7) The Display Backend, which provides drawing and windowing primitives, user interface widgets, and fonts; and Whether you're new to programming or an experienced Visual Basic programmer, you found that this latest incarnation of Visual Basic is exciting and challenging. While this version maintains a certain amount of the language constructs contained in previous versions, the entire foundation of the language has changed. Visual Basic, once considered "object-based", is now an "object-oriented" programming language[14].

Writing Visual Basic.Net Programs

Visual Studio includes a powerful, integrated development environment (IDE containing time-saving macros or specific formatting preferences.

Projects

VS.NET allows you to create several types of projects. Most of the time you will be using one of two categories:

• Windows Application -to create any standard windows application.

• ASP.NET Web Application -to create a web site.

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CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

Introduction

The practical objective of this work is to build and design a web browser that minimizes data consumption. Methods employed in gathering required data and information used for this project is: Use of documented resources and Observation Method.

Observation Method: Personal observation was also made in order to understand the whole process of developing the application.