What is a Browser?

A browser is a program that allows you to view and interact with web pages or web applications. Popular browsers include Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.

The process of how a browser operates is as follows:

1. Data Request: When a user enters a URL, the browser requests the page from a web server.

2. Data Reception: The web server sends the necessary files, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to the browser to display the website.

3. Rendering: The browser interprets (parses) and displays the received files on the screen.

A web page is essentially a long list of text and code.

The process by which browsers read and understand this long code is called Parsing.

Browsers structure the result of this understanding into a tree-like structure known as the DOM (Document Object Model) tree.

Each branch of this tree represents an element of the web page, such as a heading(h), image(img), or button(button).

Through the DOM tree, JavaScript can access each element of the web page and modify or interact with HTML elements.

You can think of the DOM tree as the neural system of the website, and JavaScript as the brain that controls the website.

For instance, when a user clicks a button, JavaScript finds the button in the DOM tree, locates the code to be executed upon the button press, and performs the action.

We will explore the DOM in more detail in the next lesson.