BASICS OF WEB DESIGN: Web Pages

        Web pages are documents created with HTML and are displayed using web browsers. The contents of a web page can be texts, pictures, sounds, videos, flash games, or web programs/ applications. There are two types of web pages categorized according to the the way is processed and relayed to the web client/browser by the web server.

Static web pages: These are web pages that are stored in the web servers and is sent to the browser when it is needed. When someone requests for a page by typing an address into an address bar of a web browser, or clicking a link on a page in a browser etc, the browser encrypts the information as a HTTP request and sends it to the web server. On the server end, the request is decoded, the  HTML file requested by the browser is retrieved and is encoded into the HTTP response that is sent back to the browser. It is then left for the browser to retrieve the HTML file from the response and render/display it as a web page to the end user.

 Dynamic web page: Dynamic web pages aren't just retrieved from the server when requested but they are fabricated at the server side by an application running on a server. A dynamic page is mainly(but not limited to) requested by the browser when you search for a term using a search engine, by filling and sending a web form etc. When the HTTP request for a dynamic page is received by the server, It decodes it and looks for the extension of the requested file for it to know which web server will handle the request and forwards the request to it. The application server will then run the specified script using the infomation from the browser to retrieved required data from the database which is then formatted into a HTML file that is encoded by the web server into the HTTP response to the browser. The browser will then retrieve the HTML file and render it as a web page for the end user. A good example of a popular website that uses dynamic pages is Facebook.