Loading a web page involves several systems that solve different parts of the problem: names, network transport, HTTP and browser rendering.

Suppose a user opens

https://example.org/page

1. Resolve the host name

The browser or operating system uses DNS to obtain network addressing information for example.org, unless a suitable result is already cached.

2. Establish communication

The client communicates with the selected server endpoint through the network stack. For HTTPS, a secure transport session is established before protected HTTP data is exchanged.

3. Send an HTTP request

The browser sends an HTTP request for the resource identified by the URL path and other relevant request information.

The server returns an HTTP response containing a status, headers and usually a body.

4. Interpret the representation

If the response body is HTML, the browser parses it into a document structure. The document may refer to additional resources such as stylesheets, scripts and images, which can trigger further requests.

5. Present the page

CSS influences visual presentation, while browser JavaScript can react to events and modify the document after the initial load.

The Web is therefore not one protocol. It is a composition of resource addressing, naming, network communication, HTTP semantics and browser document processing.