What happens in between the user entering a web page address into a browser and the browser displaying the web page:
- The browser requests the web page using HTTP from the web server it is stored on.
- If the request is successful, the web server sends a response using HTTP back to the web browser containing the web page.
- When that HTML file is received by the browser, it will start to parse it, and will probably find instructions to make more requests.
- These might be resource requests for styles, fonts, images, scripts, and so on.
- When all of the resources have been requested, the web browser parses and renders them as required, before displaying the result to the user.
Reference
How the web works: the basics