Browser and its components

A Web Browser (commonly referred to as a Browser) is a software application for accessing the information on the World Wide Web. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then displays the page on the user’s device.

Common Browsers include Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.

Components of Browser:

Credits: html5rocks.com

• User Interface: It includes the address bar, back/forward button, bookmarking menu, etc. Every part of the browser display except the window where you see the requested page.
• Browser Engine: It works as a bridge between the User interface and the rendering engine. According to the inputs from various user interfaces, it queries and manipulates the rendering engine.
• Rendering Engine: It interprets the HTML, XML documents, and images that are formatted using CSS and generates the layout that is displayed in the User Interface.
• Networking: Network calls such as HTTP requests, using different implementations for different platforms behind a platform-independent interface.
• UI backend: It used for drawing basic widgets like combo boxes and windows. This backend exposes a generic interface that is not platform-specific. Underneath it uses operating system user interface methods.
• JavaScript interpreter. Used to parse and execute JavaScript code.
• Data storage. This is a persistence layer. The browser may need to save all sorts of data locally, such as cookies. Browsers also support storage mechanisms such as localStorage, IndexedDB, WebSQL, and FileSystem.