Understanding the client side of the Web

In Chapter 11, Showcasing Your Data, we discussed how data is transferred over the Web and how servers work. In order to have a better understanding of the Web, let's discuss how web clients interpret server responses in more detail. As we already know, servers either store web content in a static format, or they generate it on the fly with CGI scripts or other web applications. We also know that these contents are usually plain text, structured text, or media files. The most common content a web client has to interpret is in structured text format, containing elements we would like to show, styles we would like to apply to our elements, and scripts we would like to run on the client side:

• HTML: Hypertext Markup Language is the standardized form of transferring visual elements from web servers to web clients. They are XML-based documents that describe each visual element between tags. Although HTML is XML-based, a valid HTML document is not necessarily...