What is “The Web” and how does it work? | Web Demystified, Episode 0
Hello!. Welcome to Web Demystified. I’m Jeremie and in this series of videos, we will try to make the web easy. So today, in this special episode, I’m gonna give you a quick overview of what the web is and how it works. Lame! Yeah! Maybe there will be stuff you already know, but you could be surprised. And if you’re not, show this video to someone who will be! Anyway, we have to start somewhere… so let’s go! Everything starts with your favorite browser where you type a web address. Nope! I use Google. Yes… and Google, like any other search engine that you could use, is nothing but a website for which you have to type its web address. Ok don’t worry, this is just an overview. We will talk
about search engines and searching the web in another video. So as you type a web address… The technical name for a web address is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator)… and it’s maybe better to save that for another video.
Overview… remember, overview. So as you type a web address and hit the “Enter” key OR click a link from a search page your browser will send a request to the server that
hosts the website that lives at that address. There, the server will process the address and
send you back an HTML document. And, yes, we will get into the details of how
server and request work… in another video.
Next, the browser retrieves the HTML document and reads it. Usually, the HTML document contains further information telling
the web browser that it needs some extra resources to render the full page. For example stylesheets (to know how to display the document) images or even scripts (to attach special effects). Yes, you got it right… other videos to cover all of that. Your browser will request all those extra resources and, once it gets all the resources, it will mix them all to, at last, display the web page you were expecting. Okay, let’s a recap! The web is a collection of documents
that will be requested by a browser from a server. Each document is accessible through a web address. The browser will mix all the necessary documents to turn any HTML document into a nice web page. Yes, the web is nothing else than that. Of course, that simplicity hides many subtle things. Things that we will explore… In another video! Well… maybe more than one.
Thank you for watching our very first video. As you might guess, many others are in the pipe and they should arrive very soon. If you liked it, share it with your friends. If you didn’t… I don’t know, share it with your… arch enemy for example? If you want to continue the discussion feel free to comment down below or join me and my colleagues on Twitter. And until next time… Long live the open web! Bye!.
