A browser is a computer program that allows you to view web sites on the Internet. Some are part of the operating system--Windows has Internet Explorer and Netscape has Navigator--and there are many others available. The browser doesn't connect you to the Internet. It's job is to make the web sites user friendly. Web sites are made up of a combination of codes, images and sometimes music. The browser interprets the code for you and decides what the background color of the site is, what size to show the graphics, where the graphics are placed on the page, what color and size to make the text, and much more.

This is a concept that fascinates me. When you view a web site in a browser, what you are looking at doesn't really exist. You are looking at what the browser does with the code when it reads it. To see what I mean, click on "View" and then "Source" to see the code for this page. Not as pretty, is it?

An Internet Service Provider is a company with which you have an account and through them you can connect to the Internet. Many of them, like OlyPen in this area, just provide you with the connection. Others such as AOL, MSN and EarthLink not only make it possible for you to connect to the Internet, but as part of their "package" also provide you with other services--their own browser, instant messaging, e-mail and so on--and all of them work slightly differently.

If you are using the browser with one of the "package" ISPs and can't view the pictures on this site, try connecting to the Internet through them and then using either the browser that comes with your computer's operating system or one that you've downloaded. So far one person has had a problem with the pictures, and this solved it.

Each browser reads the code differently. I design for Internet Explorer, so if you're using Navigator or one of the other browsers the pages may not show up exactly as I had intended them to. My apologies. For anyone who is interested, I'm a purist and design using HTML coding in Notepad with a little bit of JavaScript thrown in. The JavaScript on this page tells the browser to change the scroll bars to something other than generic. Morello way/hard way--same thing.