Lesson 1 · Web Explorer
How pages reach your screen.
You type an address, press enter, and a page appears. It feels instant and magical. It isn't magic — it's four steps, every time:
The important part for you: the files that arrive are just text. Text you could have written yourself. By the end of this month, you will have.
A browser doesn't receive a picture of a webpage. It receives instructions describing one, and builds it.
Think of it like a recipe versus a photo of a cake. The server sends the recipe. Your browser does the baking, on your device, every time you visit.
That's why the same page looks slightly different on a phone and a laptop — the browser decides how to draw it based on the screen it has. You describe what you want; the browser works out the pixels.
5 more parts in this lesson
Walkthroughs, code labs, mini-games and the checkpoint quiz unlock when you buy the course.