Just before you click on a link, say to the National Museum of African American History and Culture where do you imagine the web page you are about to see "lives?" Most people imagine that the page exists all together in a digital file on a computer in the Museum. When a link is clicked, the internet picks up the file from the Museum computer and instantly carries it to your computer, to be displayed on your screen.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
The reality is that a web page has many parts, and not all them are stored in the same place. One part of web page may be in Washington DC, and another part will be housed in a computer 100s of miles away. When you click, you tell your computer to summon all the parts to display for you, which generally happens almost instantaneously.
Image of the parts of a web page in mind map form.
<aside> ➡️ Did you know? Most browsers have a "reader view" that strip all images and videos from a website and only present text. Searching for "reader view" and your browser name, such as "Firefox," will give you the most up-to-date directions. The reader icon that lest you turn off images often looks this: 📄 .
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