What is the complete process from entering a url to the browser's address bar to get the rendered page in browser?

Question

I\'m thinking about this question for a long time. It is a big question, since it almost covers all corners related to web developing.

In my understandi

Answer 1

As you say this is a broad question where it's possible to go into great detail on a number of topics. There's nothing wrong with the sequence you described, but you're leaving out a lot of detail. To mention a few:

• The DNS layer can help direct clients to different servers based on geographical location to help with load balancing and latency minimization, and one server can respond to requests from many different DNS names.
• A browser can make different types of requests (GET, POST, HEAD, etc), and usually includes several different headers including cookies, browser capabilities, language preferences, etc.
• Most browsers usually maintain a cache in order to avoid downloading stuff many times, and use various techniques to determine whether the cached version of a file is valid.
• In modern webpages there's often complex interaction between many different kinds of files (HTML, CSS, images, JavaScript, video, Flash, ...), and web developers often need detailed knowledge of differences among browsers in order to keep their pages working for everyone

Each of these topics, and many more, could be discussed at length. Perhaps it's more practical to ask more specific questions about the topics you're interested in?