Browser: the bridge between user and website.

Before moving on to the browser, we need to know the situation when the browser is not available.

Before web browsers existed, the internet was a very different place. The internet itself, originally called ARPANET, was developed in the late 1960s as a way for researchers and the military to share information. Early internet users accessed this information using command-line interfaces (CLI) and text-based tools like Telnet or FTP (File Transfer Protocol). These tools allowed users to connect to remote servers and transfer files, but there was no easy way to navigate between different resources or view content like we do today.

The Birth of the World Wide Web

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, proposed a system to make it easier to share information over the internet. He envisioned a "web" of interconnected documents that users could navigate using hyperlinks. This idea became the World Wide Web (WWW).

To make his idea a reality, Berners-Lee created three essential technologies:

1. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): A language to create and format web pages.
2. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): A protocol for transferring web pages over the internet.
3. URL (Uniform Resource Locator): A way to uniquely identify the location of a web page.

In 1990, Berners-Lee also developed the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus). It was a basic text-based browser that allowed users to access and view web pages.

The Rise of Modern Web Browsers

While the first browser was groundbreaking, it was not widely used outside of scientific circles. The real explosion in web usage began in 1993 with the release of Mosaic, the first browser to support images alongside text. Mosaic's user-friendly interface and multimedia support made the web accessible to the average person, leading to the rapid growth of the internet.

In 1994, Marc Andreessen, one of Mosaic's developers, co-founded Netscape Communications and launched Netscape Navigator. This browser quickly became the most popular way to access the web. Around the same time, Microsoft entered the browser market with Internet Explorer, leading to the famous "browser wars" of the 1990s.

The Need for Standards: Enter ECMAScript

As browsers became more sophisticated, developers started to add interactive features to websites using JavaScript, a programming language introduced by Netscape in 1995. However, as different browsers competed for dominance, they began to implement their own versions of JavaScript, leading to compatibility issues.

To solve this problem, in 1997, the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) standardized JavaScript, creating ECMAScript. This standard ensured that all browsers implemented JavaScript in a consistent way, making it easier for developers to write code that worked across different platforms.

How Browsers Work

When you enter a URL into a browser, several things happen behind the scenes:

1. DNS Lookup: The browser translates the human-readable domain name (like www.google.com) into an IP address, which it uses to locate the server where the website is hosted.
2. HTTP Request: The browser sends an HTTP request to the server, asking for the web page.
3. Rendering: The server responds with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other resources. The browser then renders this content, turning the code into the web page you see. This involves parsing the HTML to create the Document Object Model (DOM), applying styles from the CSS, and executing JavaScript to make the page interactive.

Todays Modern and Advanced Browser

Today, web browsers are more powerful and standardized than ever before. Major browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge all follow the latest web standards set by organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group).

These standards ensure that websites look and function the same across different browsers. They cover everything from how HTML and CSS should be interpreted to how JavaScript should behave.

Now, web browsers are more than just tools for viewing websites—they are platforms for running complex applications, streaming video, and even playing games. With the advent of technologies like WebAssembly, the capabilities of web browsers continue to expand, allowing them to run high-performance applications that were once only possible on desktop software.