What Browser is
A program used to view, download, upload, surf, or otherwise access documents (for example, Web pages) on the Internet. Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer are well-known "Web browsers" that enable you to view and interact with Web sites.
Browsers read pages that are "marked up" or coded (usually in HTML but not always). These pages reside on servers. The browsers interpret the code into what we see rendered as a Web page. As well-designed software programs, browsers contain a variety of tools, including bookmarks and the back button, that make "surfing the Net" more enjoyable. You will need a browser to "get on the Web." Visit this definition on NetLingo.com for a link to product reviews and free downloads.
The meaning of HTML
Hypertext Markup Language. The lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web. HTML is a nonproprietary format based on SGML. It can be created and processed in a wide range of software programs, from simple plain text editors to WYSIWYG programs to sophisticated authoring tools.
HTML is a mark-up language (versus a programming language) that uses tags to structure text into headings, paragraphs, lists, and links (like those seen on the NetLingo.com HTML Code Cheat Sheet). It tells a Web browser how to display text and images. You can see a Web page's HTML code if you select "view source" from the View menu in your Web browser.
A question that often comes up is how to make HTML code be visible on a page and not execute? You do this by using the ASCII code equivalents of the "less than" and "greater than" symbols (this way it is interpreted as just text and not real HTML code).