Den Odell

The web browser acts as a facilitator—downloading, rendering, and executing your web application for your end users. The web browser has the power and potential to make simple code look like a glossy magazine article (in the case of Apple’s Safari browser) or as plain text without any images or advanced abilities (in the case of the open source Lynx browser, available from http://lynx.isc.org/).

This chapter explains how web browsers work internally to put together the page your users see on their screen based on the code you’ve written. It also describes how web pages get to your browser over your network connection, and highlights a number of points of contention that can hinder performance.