Autofill is a function found in some computer applications or programs, typically those containing forms, which prefills a field automatically and can save a user time.
23-418: A web browser 's autofill feature is used to fill out forms with previously entered values, or a predetermined value. This feature is commonly used to fill in login credentials. Autofill is frequently found in web browsers , used to fill in web forms automatically. When a user inputs data into a form and subsequently submits it, the web browser will often save the form's contents by default. However, when
46-574: A URL associated with a cached response subsequently gets a POST, PUT or DELETE request, the cached response will be invalidated. Many CDNs and manufacturers of network equipment have replaced this standard HTTP cache control with dynamic caching. In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act added rules to the United States Code ( 17 U.S.C. §: 512 ) that exempts system operators from copyright liability for
69-471: A cached response is still good after it becomes stale. For example, if the response has a Last-Modified header, a cache can make a conditional request using the If-Modified-Since header to see if it has changed. The ETag (entity tag) mechanism also allows for both strong and weak validation. Invalidation is usually a side effect of another request that passes through the cache. For example, if
92-409: A last name field or vice versa. For this use, proposed names for such form fields, in earlier HTML 5 specifications this RFC is no longer referenced, thus leaving the selection of names up to each browser's implementation. Certain web browsers such as Opera automatically autofill credit card information and addresses . An individual webpage may enable or disable browser autofill by default. This
115-493: A password field is detected, the web browser will typically ask the user for explicit confirmation before saving the password in its password store, often secured with a built-in password manager to allow the use of a "master password" before credentials can be autofilled. Most of the time, such as in Internet Explorer and Google Toolbar, the entries depend on the form field's name, so as to not enter street names in
138-531: A section in the menu for deleting cookies. Finer-grained management of cookies usually requires a browser extension . The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb , was created in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee . He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser , which displayed web pages on dumb terminals . The Mosaic web browser was released in April 1993, and was later credited as
161-808: A sync service and web accessibility features. Common user interface (UI) features: While mobile browsers have similar UI features as desktop versions, the limitations of touch screens require mobile UIs to be simpler. The difference is significant for users accustomed to keyboard shortcuts . The most popular desktop browsers also have sophisticated web development tools . Web browsers are popular targets for hackers , who exploit security holes to steal information, destroy files , and other malicious activities. Browser vendors regularly patch these security holes, so users are strongly encouraged to keep their browser software updated. Other protection measures are antivirus software and being aware of scams . Web cache A Web cache (or HTTP cache )
184-544: A web browser is to fetch content and display it on the user's device. This process begins when the user inputs a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), such as https://en.wikipedia.org/ , into the browser. Virtually all URLs on the Web start with either http: or https: which means they are retrieved with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). For secure mode (HTTPS), the connection between
207-465: Is Google Chrome , with a 67% global market share on all devices, followed by Safari with 18%. A web browser is not the same thing as a search engine , though the two are often confused. A search engine is a website that provides links to other websites. However, to connect to a website's server and display its web pages, a user must have a web browser installed. In some technical contexts, browsers are referred to as user agents . The purpose of
230-510: Is a system for optimizing the World Wide Web. It is implemented both client-side and server-side. The caching of multimedia and other files can result in less overall delay when browsing the Web. A forward cache is a cache outside the web server 's network, e.g. in the client's web browser , in an ISP , or within a corporate network. A network-aware forward cache only caches heavily accessed items. A proxy server sitting between
253-401: Is an application for accessing websites . When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on a range of devices, including desktops , laptops , tablets , and smartphones . By 2020, an estimated 4.9 billion people had used a browser. The most-used browser
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#1732790449359276-460: Is based on Mozilla 's code. Both of these codebases are open-source, so a number of small niche browsers are also made from them. The most popular browsers share many features in common. They automatically log users' browsing history , unless the users turn off their browsing history or use the non-logging private mode . They also allow users to set bookmarks , customize the browser with extensions , and can manage user passwords . Some provide
299-539: Is done in HTML with the autocomplete attribute in a <form> element or its corresponding form elements. It has been shown that the autofill feature of modern browsers can be exploited in a phishing attack with the use of hidden form fields, which allows personal information such as the user's phone number to be collected. This Web - software -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Web browser A web browser
322-560: Is specified in the header of HTTP response messages from the server. Freshness allows a response to be used without re-checking it on the origin server, and can be controlled by both the server and the client. For example, the Expires response header gives a date when the document becomes stale, and the Cache-Control: max-age directive tells the cache how many seconds the response is fresh for. Validation can be used to check whether
345-408: The most popular browser. Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Within a few years, Microsoft gained a dominant position in the browser market for two reasons: it bundled Internet Explorer with its popular Windows operating system and did so as freeware with no restrictions on usage. The market share of Internet Explorer peaked at over 95% in
368-513: The basis for many other browsers, including Microsoft Edge , currently in third place with about a 5% share, as well as Samsung Internet and Opera in fifth and sixth places respectively with over 2% market share each. The other two browsers in the top four are made from different codebases . Safari , based on Apple 's WebKit code, is the second most popular web browser and is dominant on Apple devices, resulting in an 18% global share. Firefox , in fourth place, with about 3% market share,
391-494: The browser and web server is encrypted , providing a secure and private data transfer. Web pages usually contain hyperlinks to other pages and resources. Each link contains a URL, and when it is clicked or tapped , the browser navigates to the new resource. Most browsers use an internal cache of web page resources to improve loading times for subsequent visits to the same page. The cache can store many items, such as large images, so they do not need to be downloaded from
414-552: The client and web server can evaluate HTTP headers and choose whether to store web content. A reverse cache sits in front of one or more web servers, accelerating requests from the Internet and reducing peak server load. This is usually a content delivery network (CDN) that retains copies of web content at various points throughout a network. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) defines three basic mechanisms for controlling caches: freshness, validation, and invalidation. This
437-659: The early 2000s. In 1998, Netscape launched what would become the Mozilla Foundation to create a new browser using the open-source software model. This work evolved into the Firefox browser, first released by Mozilla in 2004. Firefox's market share peaked at 32% in 2010. Apple released its Safari browser in 2003; it remains the dominant browser on Apple devices, though it did not become popular elsewhere. Google debuted its Chrome browser in 2008, which steadily took market share from Internet Explorer and became
460-657: The first web browser to find mainstream popularity. Its innovative graphical user interface made the World Wide Web easy to navigate and thus more accessible to the average person. This, in turn, sparked the Internet boom of the 1990s, when the Web grew at a very rapid rate. The lead developers of Mosaic then founded the Netscape corporation, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994. Navigator quickly became
483-513: The most popular browser in 2012. Chrome has remained dominant ever since. By 2015, Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Edge for the Windows 10 release. Since the early 2000s, browsers have greatly expanded their HTML , CSS , JavaScript , and multimedia capabilities. One reason has been to enable more sophisticated websites, such as web apps . Another factor is the significant increase of broadband connectivity in many parts of
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#1732790449359506-401: The server again. Cached items are usually only stored for as long as the web server stipulates in its HTTP response messages. During the course of browsing, cookies received from various websites are stored by the browser. Some of them contain login credentials or site preferences. However, others are used for tracking user behavior over long periods of time, so browsers typically provide
529-405: The world, enabling people to access data-intensive content, such as streaming HD video on YouTube , that was not possible during the era of dial-up modems . Google Chrome has been the dominant browser since the mid-2010s and currently has a 67% global market share on all devices. The vast majority of its source code comes from Google's open-source Chromium project; this code is also
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