BEHIND THE CLICK

AN INTERACTIVE WEB EXPLAINER

You pressed Enter.
A lot just happened.

Type a web address and follow one request as it travels through the systems that turn a URL into a page on your screen.

https://
The journey is simplified. For Arrival, we request a rendered homepage snapshot of the address you entered, using a Netlify function with a public snapshot fallback.
SEE WHAT HAPPENS ↓

01 / THE JOURNEY

Follow the request.

We simplify a few details so the route is easy to understand. Real browsers can reuse cached answers, existing connections, and newer protocols.

REQUESTING netlify.com
A simplified website request journey Eight stops show a browser request moving from your device through the network, DNS, internet, server, response files, browser rendering, and finally the visible page. YOU BROWSER WI-FI NETWORK DNS LOOKUP INTERNET + TLS SERVER OR CDN FILES RESPONSE BROWSER RENDER PAGE VISIBLE
READY Press “Start journey” to send the request.
00

READY

Your browser is waiting.

Enter a URL above, then start the journey to see what happens between pressing Enter and seeing a webpage.

WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING

The whole experience runs locally. We are visualizing the steps rather than contacting the domain you typed.

STATEidle

02 / ARRIVAL

All of that happened so you could see this page.

And the page itself is not one thing. Your browser assembled several different kinds of files and instructions into the final result.

TAKE THE PAGE APART ↓
https://netlify.com
OPEN LIVE ↗
WAITING FOR THE JOURNEY The actual homepage will appear here after you send a URL.
Homepage snapshot for the URL entered above
ACTUAL HOMEPAGE SNAPSHOT Waiting for a URL.

03 / EXPLODE THE PAGE

A webpage is a stack of parts.

Pull the finished page apart. Click any piece to see the job it does.

netlify.com
The homepage snapshot ready to be exploded into layers

THE FINISHED PAGE

Your homepage will appear here.

Run the journey first.
SELECT A PIECE

What is the page made of?

Explode the page, then choose a piece to learn how it contributes to what you see and use.

browser → pixels

04 / KEEP IN MIND

The real web can take shortcuts.

Our animation shows a clean first-visit path. In practice, several steps can be skipped or shortened.

01

Cache

Your browser and network may already have copies of files or DNS answers, which can make repeat visits faster.

02

Connection reuse

Browsers can reuse existing secure connections instead of starting from zero for every request.

03

CDNs

A content delivery network can serve files from infrastructure closer to the visitor instead of one distant origin server.

04

HTTP/2 + HTTP/3

Modern protocols can move many resources efficiently. HTTP/3 uses QUIC rather than the classic TCP path.

LEARN MORE

Want the technical version?

MDN · How the web works ↗ MDN · How browsers load websites ↗ MDN · Critical rendering path ↗ Thum.io · Website screenshot API ↗