But the world does not stand still and the rate of change has only accelerated in the past 18 months, and it's the Internet that has been driving this change like no other technology ever seen before. With the advent of the Internet in everyone's lives, a mechanism was needed to easily send information across the Internet from host servers to browser-based clients. For example, companies are rushing to build database solutions to distribute information not only across the enterprise, but across the globe. A client in England needs to get product information on the new camping gear from a supplier in Washington State. The tyrant of geography is no more - the Internet is changing the way we live.
Consider the ubiquitous Web browser, such as the Microsoft Internet Explorer. The browser is of course a computer program. Not only that, but the web browser is the most widely distributed and used computer program in history. More computers of all stripes run a browser than any other type of application. Since the browser application is a client, it gets served data from a server computer somewhere in the world. And the browser client, since it is a computer program, can take the data it is served and do things with it.
For example, a simple text file formatted using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) tags can be rendered perfectly in any browser running on an IBM compatible, MAC, Sun, or any other type of computer. Since the browser can render HTML pages on any computer, the server simply serves the HTML file and it's the individual browser's responsibility to format and render the output. So the server doesn't know or care what type of browser is receiving the data - it just serves it up.