To many, many people, the Internet is that lowercase letter e with a comet circling it that they click and, once activated, magically transports them to the land of amazon.com and Google. This is not an unreasonable assumption to make; if you use Microsoft Word, you access it by clicking the Word icon, just like a host of other programs. The function of the program is represented by what you click on to get there—the picture of the W is Word. Why wouldn’t the little e be the Internet?

 Lest you begin to believe that all technology is designed to intentionally confuse you, we’ll start with a little history. The Internet predated the first popular web browser by several years, and this tool took many years to reach its current incarnation. Most people in the early days of web browsers just used the interface that came with whichever service mitigated their dial-up internet access, like the AOL browser, or Netscape Navigator. Internet Explorer (by the way, that’s the little e) was mainly for the lucky few who had constant internet connections, and wasn’t used on many personal home computers until cable internet became more widely available. So web browsers kind of snuck up on us disguised as the internet. Plus, Internet Explorer automatically came bundled with your Windows operating system, so when you did make that upgrade to cable internet, it was the tool that was most readily available for most of us. (Mac users had Safari built in on their machines.)

 Now, though, we have evolved, and so have web browsers. A web browser is a tool (a software application, to be more precise) that provides an interface through which you can interact with the internet. Web browsers include the aforementioned Internet Explorer (Microsoft), Safari (Apple), Firefox (Mozilla/ Netscape), Chrome (Google), and Opera (Opera).

 All web browsers have a few features in common. Near the top of the web browser window, there is an address bar, where you can input addresses for individual websites. Some web browsers have actually split the space for the address bar into a search box and an address bar, so that you can directly access a search engine from the top of the page without navigating to the individual website for the search engine. Newer web browsers, like Google Chrome, have made it even more simple by combining these two, along with predictive searching, so that you can either perform a search or input a web address in the address bar. Web browsers have also evolved to allow tabbed searching, which enables the user to open multiple web pages at once in the same browser window by either using the key combination Ctrl + T, or by clicking the additional tab button at the top of the browser window (usually located next to the currently open tab). (These tabs are designed to look like the tabs on a file folder, so look for the feature of your open browser that matches this description.) Finally, some older common features of browser windows include the back and forward buttons (usually opposing arrows next to the address bar, for navigating to websites just visited), and a mechanism for bookmarking the websites you visit most often (these bookmarks are called “Favorites” in Internet Explorer).

 Why is all of this important? Because of the recent changes that have been made in how web browsers function, chances are that you could be using the internet more efficiently, and a new or updated browser can help you do this. The web browsers that I listed before are FREE to download from the internet. That’s Free free, really free, no strings attached (unless you forget to uncheck any boxes that appear along the download process, but you have to assume personal responsibility for not reading that fine print, and it still won’t cost anything).

 You can try out all of these browsers, but again, I’m going to recommend the Google product, Chrome. Chrome is my browser of choice currently, with Firefox running a close second, and Safari on their heels. All of these browsers are light applications (meaning they won’t make your computer run noticeably more slowly, like some programs). Chrome is my favorite, and the one I teach my students to use, because it is easy to use and highly uncluttered. It has a very clean interface. Also, unlike Firefox and Safari, I have never had to allow an update of Chrome, because it automatically keeps itself updated.

 To download and try out a new web browser, use the address bar in your current browser to navigate to google.com and enter the name of any of the browsers that were listed. Use one of the first links in the search to go to that browser’s main page and download the application. Then, start surfing!

 One last tip— if you ARE using Internet Explorer, and you fear change, the next time you open it up, look at the top of the window— is there a stack of toolbars there at the top of the screen? Do you ever actually use any of those? Toolbars are little add-ons that companies like to sneak into other innocuous downloads that make your web browsing experience more difficult by slowing everything down and cluttering the screen. They are the scourge of the internet, and a bane of Information Technologists everywhere. You can get rid of these useless toolbars, and make your life easier, by clicking the little X on the left hand side of the bar and disabling them. Do it!

Find me on Twitter @libraryladyjane.