Once upon a time, there was a curious explorer named Deona who wanted to learn more about the world. She heard about a website that had all the information she needed, so she turned to her trusty web browser to visit the site.
Deona’s browser was like a loyal companion, always ready to help her explore the vastness of the internet. When she typed in the website’s address, the browser sprang into action, sending a request to the server where the website was hosted.
The server received the request and sent back a response that contained the website’s HTML code.
Behind the curtain, what the server did there was to first determine which webpage Deona was requesting. To do this, the server looked at the part of the URL after the domain name. This is called the path, and it identifies the specific webpage within the website that Deona wants to see.
Once the server had determined which webpage Deona was requesting, it looked for the corresponding HTML file on its own system. It found the file and loaded it into its memory and began to process it. The server began to read the HTML code and resources the webpage needed, such as images or scripts. It combined them into a response and sent it back to Deona’s browser. The response contained the HTML code, along with any other resources that the webpage needed, such as images or scripts.
The browser received the response with the HTML code and resources and began to parse it, which means it read through the code and turned it into something the browser could understand.
As the browser parsed the HTML code, it created a Document Object Model (DOM) tree. The DOM tree is a hierarchical representation of the webpage’s structure, and it includes all the elements and attributes of the HTML code.
The browser used the DOM tree to understand how to display the webpage. It read through the tree, starting at the top with the root element, and worked its way down, adding each element to the webpage as it went.
The DOM tree allowed the browser to understand how the elements on the webpage were related to one another. For example, it could see that a paragraph was inside a div element, which was inside a section element, which was inside the body element of the HTML document.
As the browser added elements to the webpage, it also applied any styles that were specified in the CSS code. It used the DOM tree to understand which styles applied to each element and how to apply them correctly.
Finally, once the browser had added all the elements to the webpage and applied all the styles, it displayed the webpage for Deona to explore.
However, the webpage was not yet complete. It still needed to be interactive, allowing Deona to click buttons, submit forms, and perform other actions. That’s where JavaScript came in.
JavaScript is a programming language that runs on the browser and allows websites to be interactive. When the browser parsed the HTML code, it also looked for JavaScript code embedded in the webpage. When it found JavaScript code, it executed it to add interactivity to the webpage.
For example, the webpage might have had a button that, when clicked, would show or hide some text. The JavaScript code would listen for a click on the button, and when it detected one, it would change the style of the text element to show or hide it.
JavaScript could also make requests to the server, just like the browser did when it loaded the webpage. This allowed the webpage to dynamically update without requiring the user to reload the entire page.
With JavaScript, the webpage became much more interactive and responsive. Deona could interact with the page, see changes happen in real-time, and get a more engaging experience.
She clicked on links, scrolled through pictures, and read through the text, all thanks to the hard work of her loyal browser and the helpful server on the other end.
And that’s how a web browser and server work together to make a website come to life for Deona to explore, with the help of the DOM tree to parse the HTML code and create a structured representation of the webpage, and the role of JavaScript in making the site more interactive for Deona.