How does a browser work under the hood?

When we type a URL and press Enter, a lot happens behind the scenes:

DNS Lookup → Finds the server’s IP
Request → Sends HTTP/HTTPS request to the server
Response → Server sends back HTML, CSS, JS, images
Parsing →
HTML → DOM
CSS → CSSOM
JS → executed…


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Mst Surnaly Akter

When we type a URL and press Enter, a lot happens behind the scenes:

  1. DNS Lookup → Finds the server’s IP
  2. Request → Sends HTTP/HTTPS request to the server
  3. Response → Server sends back HTML, CSS, JS, images
  4. Parsing → HTML → DOM CSS → CSSOM JS → executed by JavaScript engine
  5. Render Tree → Combines DOM + CSSOM
  6. Layout → Calculates size & position of elements
  7. Painting → Draws pixels on the screen
  8. Compositing → Layers combined for smooth rendering

Browsers also manage caching, security, and optimization to keep things fast & safe.

Every website you visit runs through this pipeline in milliseconds!

hashtag#WebDevelopment hashtag#Frontend hashtag#BrowserInternals


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Mst Surnaly Akter


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