What Is a Website? Browsers, Addresses and How Search Really Works
A website is just a set of files sitting on somebody's computer. A browser is the app that fetches those files and paints them into a page.
The whole idea, in one diagram
HTML is the skeleton: headings, paragraphs, pictures and links.
CSS is the clothes: colours, sizes, spacing and layout.
JavaScript is the muscles: things that move, respond and change when you tap.
What problem did it solve?
Information existed on thousands of computers and there was no way to point from one document to another. If a paper mentioned another paper, you had to find that machine, get permission, and know exactly where to look.
Tim Berners-Lee combined three simple ideas: a way to write pages, a way to give every page a unique address, and a link you could click to jump straight to another one.
Knowledge became something you follow rather than something you hunt. A child in one country can read a museum, a library and a university in the next three taps.
How it started
- 1989 to 1990
The proposal, and the first browser
π€ Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, Switzerland
He wrote a proposal for linking documents together. His manager wrote vague but exciting on it. He then built the first browser and the first web server himself.
Why it mattered: Three inventions in one: HTML for writing pages, URLs for addressing them, and HTTP for fetching them. All three are still in use today.
- 1991
The first website goes live
π€ CERN
The world's first web page explained what the World Wide Web was and how to make your own. It was plain text and links, with no pictures at all.
Why it mattered: It is still online today. The first thing the web ever did was teach people how to join in.
- 1993
The web gets pictures
π€ Marc Andreessen, Eric Bina and the Mosaic team, USA
Mosaic was the first widely used browser to show images alongside text, in a window anyone could use with a mouse.
Why it mattered: This is when the web stopped being for scientists. Making it look like something rather than read like something changed who wanted to use it.
- 1994
The web is given away
π€ CERN
CERN put the web technology into the public domain, so anybody could use it without paying or asking permission.
Why it mattered: A charged or licensed web would have grown into something small and controlled. This decision is why anyone can publish a page today.
- 1998
Search learns to judge
π€ Larry Page and Sergey Brin, USA
Earlier search engines mostly counted how often a word appeared. The new idea was to look at which pages other pages linked to, treating a link as a kind of vote.
Why it mattered: Suddenly search results were useful rather than merely matching. Finding became as important as publishing.
- 2007 onwards
Pages learn to bend
π€ Web designers everywhere
With phones arriving, a page could no longer assume a big screen. Sites were rebuilt to rearrange themselves for whatever width they land on.
Why it mattered: Most web pages are now read on a phone. A site that does not bend is a site most people cannot use.
- 2014 onwards
The padlock becomes normal
π€ Browser makers and web hosts
Connections became encrypted by default, so what you send cannot easily be read by anyone in between. Browsers began warning about sites without it.
Why it mattered: It protects passwords and messages. It is worth knowing that the padlock proves the connection is private, not that the website is honest.
Who made it happen
Tim Berners-Lee
born 1955 Β· England, working at CERN
Invented the web: HTML for pages, URLs for addresses and HTTP for fetching. He also built the first browser and server.
Robert Cailliau
born 1947 Β· Belgium, at CERN
Worked with Berners-Lee to push the web forward inside CERN and argued for giving it away freely.
Marc Andreessen
born 1971 Β· USA
Co-created Mosaic in 1993, the browser that put pictures next to text and made the web appealing to everyone.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
1998 Β· USA
Built a search engine that ranked pages by the links pointing at them, which made results genuinely useful.
HΓ₯kon Wium Lie
born 1965 Β· Norway
Proposed CSS in 1994, the idea that a page's appearance should be described separately from its content.
Brendan Eich
born 1961 Β· USA
Created JavaScript in 1995, the language that lets a page respond and change without fetching a new one.
From typing an address to seeing the page
- 1
You type an address
A web address has parts. https says how to fetch it, learningappforkids.com says which computer, and anything after the slash says which page on that computer.
- 2
The name is turned into a number
Your device asks the Domain Name System for the number belonging to that name, because machines find each other by number.
- 3
The browser asks the server
It sends a short request meaning please send me this page. The server finds the right files and sends them back.
- 4
The browser reads the HTML
HTML describes the structure: this is a heading, this is a paragraph, this is a picture, this is a link. The browser builds a plan of the page from it.
- 5
CSS decides how it looks
A separate file says what colour the headings are, how big the text is and where things sit. The same HTML can look completely different with different CSS.
- 6
JavaScript makes it respond
Code running in your browser handles the things that react: menus opening, a quiz marking your answer, a picture sliding across. It runs on your device, not on the server.
A website is files on somebody else's computer. Your browser fetches a copy and rebuilds the page on your screen, which is why two people can look at the same site and see it slightly differently.
Look at the address bar on this page and find the three parts: the https, the site name, and the path after the slash. Then ask a grown-up to show you the page source or reader view, so you can see the plain skeleton underneath all the colours.
Quiz: how much did you remember?
Quiz time!
10 questions, picked at random from 30. No sign-in and no score is kept. Play as many times as you like, the questions change every time.
Questions about websites
What is a website in simple words?
A website is a group of pages kept as files on a computer called a server. When you visit, your browser asks for those files and draws the page on your screen.
What is a browser?
A browser is the app you use to look at websites, such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. Its job is to fetch files and turn them into a page you can read and tap.
What is the difference between a website and a web page?
A web page is one page. A website is the whole collection of pages that live under the same name, in the same way a book is made of many pages.
What do the parts of a web address mean?
In https://learningappforkids.com/explore, the https says how to fetch it and that the connection is private, learningappforkids.com says which computer to ask, and /explore says which page you want.
How does a search engine find things?
Programs called crawlers follow links around the web and keep a huge index of what is on each page. When you search, the engine looks in the index and ranks the pages it thinks are most useful.
What are HTML, CSS and JavaScript?
HTML is the structure of the page, like a skeleton. CSS is the appearance, like clothes. JavaScript is the behaviour, the parts that move and respond when you interact.
What does the padlock in the address bar mean?
It means the connection is scrambled, so somebody in between cannot easily read what you send. It does not promise that the people running the website are honest, which is an important difference.
Why do some websites look different on a phone?
Good sites are built to rearrange themselves for the screen they land on. Columns become one column, menus fold into a button. Most web pages are now read on phones, so this matters more than the desktop version.
Want lessons that are marked and saved?
The free courses run from playgroup to Grade 5, in order, with three difficulty levels.
See the free courses β