Comments on: Rendering a web page – step by step

By: Hasan Sheikh

Hasan Sheikh — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:44:00 +0000

good one!

By: moocr

moocr — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:27:58 +0000

This is a very clear steps list from type a url to show a web page.
I just develop a very simple blowser using java, it can not display any image or picture, it just show the links, hehe, I study the steps by this way!

By: washburn

washburn — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:43:46 +0000

Thank for slowing thing down for us. we surf the net every day not thinking about what is taking place in the background.
we have come a far way

By: Rodrigo Alves Vieira

Rodrigo Alves Vieira — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:17:16 +0000

Thanks for the writing!

By: jeffatrackaid

jeffatrackaid — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:50:25 +0000

When you break down a HTTP request like this you can begin to see why a site may take a long time to load. Consider a graphics laden site with dozens of images. This process has to repeat for every request. Many browsers restrict the number of simultaneous downloads to a server, so even if the server and network is fast, the page may load slowly as it handles dozens of request. Tools like YSlow and Page Speed (FireFox add-ons) can help you pinpoint problems in your site. I see a lot of companies waste money on hardware upgrades when tweaking a page design to limit HTTP requests would have provided much greater bang for the buck.

By: R2J WebWorld

R2J WebWorld — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:20:09 +0000

Wow, this is such a super, long step taken for a split-second process! @ Mac, I think the last 2 weren’t a step at all.

By: Siegfried

Siegfried — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:40:33 +0000

Nice, but not always true.

1. Not all web pages are built out of a database. So you may skip this steps for all socalled static web pages. I think constructing static pages dynamically is nonsense.

2. The page is rendered earlier. At least in modern browsers. As soon as the html is loaded and parsed, the page is rendered (while loading other resources like stylesheets). After loading the stylesheets the page is rendered again. And after loading each image the page is rendered again. And after loading and parsing the javascript the page is rendered again.

By: Guillermo

Guillermo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:21:43 +0000

Wow! Try to figure all this stuff in the old (no so good) days of the /360 or VAX-11…
By the way, sometimes here in Montevideo, with mobile ADSL it seems that we are still in that era. That’s why I prefer information over spectacularity: ¡avoid heavy pages!
Great article, very helpful, ¡Gracias!
Guillermo.

By: Gkanell

Gkanell — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:34:14 +0000

Very nice article…thnx for sharing…

By: Mac

Mac — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:26:47 +0000

Some of these steps could have been combined and the last one is not really a ‘step’.

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:39:12 +0000

Interesting stuff, I never thought about how many steps it goes through.

By: Case pariuri

Case pariuri — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:44:44 +0000

So true! And as a happy-end and pain-beginning, this is just the beginning – steps for arriving at you – after that it’s the process of loading it! I guess there can be millions of processes loaded around this action!

By: Pariloto

Pariloto — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:05:16 +0000

I think that this is also a good guide for understanding how you can speed up a web site, by controling and optimizing some of the above steps.

I think that a “correct” html combined with a good browser will get you happy as all the steps above will be made under the tenth of a second that you talked about.

By: Robin

Robin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:47:33 +0000

This is bookmarked and printed for reference! Thanks for a great one :) !

By: Kristopher

Kristopher — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:22:24 +0000

From a networking and transit perspective, there’s easily 10 sub steps under #6.