Clients and Servers
Every website interaction is a conversation between two parties. Your browser is the client — it asks for things. The server is a computer (often far away) that stores files and answers requests. When you type a URL and press Enter, your browser sends an HTTP request across the internet and the server sends back an HTTP response containing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
DNS: The Internet's Phone Book
Computers talk to each other using numeric IP addresses like 93.184.216.34, not names like "okstem.org." The Domain Name System (DNS) acts like a phone book — it translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses so your browser knows where to connect.
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Every website is built from three languages working together:
- HTML defines the content and structure of the page (headings, paragraphs, images, links)
- CSS controls the visual presentation — colors, fonts, layout, spacing
- JavaScript adds interactivity — responding to clicks, animating elements, fetching data
Your browser downloads all three files and combines them into the page you see.