Browsers Role in Web Development

Browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and many more are software used to visit various sites on the internet. They act as an interface between the user and the internet content. Modern browsers also provide many additional features, such as privacy, extensions, developer tools, bookmarks, history, etc. Due to the increase in the number of web apps, the browser has DevTools, which provides many tools for developers to test and debug the web app.

Web development is used to create websites that are supported in various browsers and can be used by a wide range of audiences. A web developer codes the design, structure, behavior, or functionality of the site. Web development also involves the improvement of current websites with respect to various modern browsers and new and improved technology.

Web development is required for various reasons, which are:

• Building a secure web: With improvements in the web, security is also something that needs to improve. Nowadays, people are concerned with privacy and security to keep their data and themselves safe.
• Improvement in PWA: Due to the increased use of the website as an application, many features have been added, such as notifications and offline support. These features make the site a progressive web app that performs as well as and sometimes better than a native app.
• New UI Designs and Improved UX: With improvements in other features, you should not forget about the UI and UX of the site. The improvement and introduction of new designs make the sites more appealing to modern users.
• Multi-platform support: Due to browsers supporting multiple platforms, these sites can also be accessed but may look or behave differently depending on the various range of devices. Modern websites support responsive design, such that the site backbone remains the same but the layout or behavior changes depending on the device.
• Improved accessibility features: With websites being highly used by a wide range of users, they must be accessible for differently abled users, thus increasing the number of users for the site and making the site useful for everyone.

Browser’s Role in Web Development

The various roles of browsers in web development are:

• Supporting various standards: The web page must behave and render almost the same in all modern browsers for a uniform user experience. This is achieved by some standards, such as HTML5, CSS3, and ECMAScript, implemented by various organizations.
• Improving DOM and CSS: You can inspect the DOM of the webpage for various issues or just inspect the structure using the inspect mode. You can also inspect the CSS of the webpage for the selected element using the inspect mode.
• Making Live Changes: The various JS code and CSS attributes can be changed in the browser itself using the DevTools. This helps a lot in saving time, as we can view live changes on the web page without switching between the code editor and the browser.
• Testing for Modern Browsers: Multiple browsers can be checked in only one browser using DevTools. The DevTools provides a preloaded list of modern browsers, which you can select for inspection or testing support for the web page in various modern browsers.
• Accessibility features: Modern browsers support accessibility features such as keyboard navigation and shortcuts, visual customization, and text-to-speech. It also provides testing tools to find out accessibility issues and provides suggestions or reference links to solve the problem.
• Security and privacy improvement: The sites can be checked for insecurity and privacy issues that may arise from the various unencrypted data stored by the browser. A site must be secure enough with proper encryption and authentication to make the web experience as secure as possible.

How do browsers support web development tools and technologies?

The various ways browsers support web development tools and technologies are:

• Custom JS engine: Different browsers have different JS engines, such as V8, SpiderMonkey, etc., that interpret and execute JS. Different engines provide different performance advantages over each other.
• Various support for web APIs: The browser provides web APIs such as geolocation API, file API, fetch API, etc., which provide web sites with various features of the browser or the user’s system.
• Custom Rendering Engine: Different browsers have different rendering engines, such as Gecko and Blink, that parse the HTML and CSS code and print them in the viewport of the browser.
• Developer Tools: Most modern browsers provide various sets of tools, which are called DevTools, used to inspect, modify, or test the page to debug the web site or increase accessibility or performance.

Necessary DevTools provided by the various Browsers

There are some tools that most browsers provide that can be used by developers during web development. Considering the Edge browser for representing the various DevTools To open DevTools in most browsers, either right-click the page and click Inspect from the context menu or use the shortcut key “Ctrl+Shift+I.”.

• Elements Tool: It provides a DOM view where you can inspect the HTML and CSS code of the web page or specific elements of the web page and debug them accordingly. You can also edit CSS code and check the changes live in the browser itself.

Using Elements Tool

• Console Tool: It displays various messages, errors, or warnings of the webpage JS code and also allows users to write JS code which can be used to get information or manipulate the DOM of the web page.

Using Console Tool

• Sources Tool: Works as an editor and provides various debugger tools in the browser itself. It is very useful to edit JS files and used the debugger to inspect expression and debug the code without the use of any IDE softwares.

Using Sources Tool

• Network Tool: It displays various network requests and responses and also provide information about the resources that are being downloaded or uploaded in the webpage. You get various information about the resources such as type, size, and HTTP response status codes.

Using Network Tool

• Performance Tool: It is used to view the performance of the webpage after it is fully loaded. You can check for various memory and CPU usage of the webpage. The tool provides various views such as tables and graphs to analyze the performance of the webpage.

Using Performance Tool

• Memory Tool: It is used to check the memory usage of the webpage and find potential memory leaks. The memory that is not garbage collected can be viewed and debugged using this tool.

Using Memory Tool

• Security Tool: It displays security information of the webpage that is, it checks for valid HTTPS used by the server. It also provides certificate and encryption and authentication details of the various resources origin used by the webpage.

Using Security Tool

The browsers are design to provide a good experience and various features to user for browsing the web. But will gaining popularity of website and PWA the browser are also getting updates for various DevTools which helps in improving the web app.