The web browser is a piece of software so fundamentally important to technical marketing that it would be strange to start with any other Topic in this handbook.
The central focus on the browser stems from the fact that it represents the user: the person who visits a website, interacts with ads, writes social media posts, and downloads PDFs. The browser is their utility, their application, their agent.
What logically follows is that the better you, as a technical marketer, understand the web browser, the better you will understand how to interpret the actions of the user. This is a vital, fundamental skill to anyone working in marketing.
Don’t miss this fact!
The web browser is the most important tool of the technical marketer. Understanding how it works will help you understand more about all the different digital marketing disciplines.
But how does a browser work? This is a question that is impossible to answer in a straightforward way.
This is because browsers are complicated pieces of software. They comprise multiple different browser enginesThe core software component of any web browser. Its most important task is to convert resources loaded from web servers into the dynamic representation of the web page., components, and layers to provide the end user with a (seemingly) seamless browsing experience.
The complexity starts from the top: there are many different browsers available to use, and they all work a bit differently.
Example
If you use a Windows computer, you’ll have Microsoft Edge installed for you. Edge is actually based on the Chromium open-source project, which runs on the Blink engine. Blink is also what runs under the hood of Google Chrome. Blink, in turn is a fork of a core WebKit component. WebKit is the browser engineThe core software component of any web browser. Its most important task is to convert resources loaded from web servers into the dynamic representation of the web page. created by Apple, and it runs the Safari browser and many iOS and iPadOS browser applications. Webkit itself is a fork of…
OK, you probably got the idea.
This illustrates how browsers are hardly standalone, self-sufficient applications. They are patchwork – built from different parts of different projects, often with a lot of technical debtGenerally technical debt describes design patterns that will cause problems in the future if they’re not appropriately fixed or maintained over time. Typical example of technical debt is a patch or a workaround that was supposed to be temporary but that isn't actually updated when the underlying problem goes away..
Although the major browsers converge on the most important implementation decisions, there are enough differences in the fringes to sometimes make web development a very frustrating task. Browser-specific exceptions to site functionality add friction at development time, and users tend to blame the website rather than the browser when something goes awry.
As a technical marketer, you need to know how the browser works. You don’t need to know all the technical nitty-gritty, but the concepts explored in this Topic will be invaluable to you when working in almost any digital marketing project.
How does a web browser work?
When you launch a web browser application like Google Chrome, you interact with the user interface layer of a very complicated system.
You would typically start with a URLUniversal Resource Locator, the main method of encoding internet addresses for web browsers to send requests to. – Uniform Resource Locator. This is what you type into the address bar of the browser. The URLUniversal Resource Locator, the main method of encoding internet addresses for web browsers to send requests to. points to a web serverA machine connected to the World Wide Web, which is purpose-built to respond to HTTP requests from clients and for sending resources in response. that is connected to the internet. More specifically, the URLUniversal Resource Locator, the main method of encoding internet addresses for web browsers to send requests to. points to a web page resource that you want to navigate to.
When you type an address into the address bar and press enter, it initiates an HTTP requestHyperText Transfer Protocol is the main communication method of the World Wide Web. When clients send requests to web browsers, they are sent using HTTP. The purpose of the request is to fetch data from the web server. to the web serverA machine connected to the World Wide Web, which is purpose-built to respond to HTTP requests from clients and for sending resources in response. behind that URLUniversal Resource Locator, the main method of encoding internet addresses for web browsers to send requests to. with the intent of navigating to the web page that the web serverA machine connected to the World Wide Web, which is purpose-built to respond to HTTP requests from clients and for sending resources in response. returns. Using the terminology of the internet, your web browser is the clientA machine connected to the internet that sends requests to a server. A web browser would be a typical example of a client, as it sends requests to web servers..
From the moment the web browser starts processing your navigation request, differences among web browsers emerge.
Many web browsers rely on technology that has been in existence for decades and that has been built on and iterated by different teams with different agendas.
There is no absolute, universal consensus on how a web browser should work, even if there are lots of web standardsA set of agreed principles for how web browsers should render web content and how that web content can be interacted with. to build on. While many things are thankfully standardized, browser-specific differences exist as a headache for web developers and technical marketers alike.
Example
If you are using a browser like Brave, you might find it difficult to build and test marketing campaigns. This is because the browser is so aggressive at blocking all tracking and advertising technologies. It’s difficult to test an ad if you can’t even see that ad in the first place!
If you use a browser like Safari, you might find that you need to log in again and again each time you visit a website, or that your shopping cart doesn’t include all the items you added to it the previous day.
As a technical marketer, you need to be sensitive to these differences. It will help you build marketing campaigns more efficiently, and it will help you understand possible friction points both in the data that you analyze and in the user experience of your customers who visit your site.
Ready for a quick break?
Now’s a good time to take a small break – walk around for 5 minutes and have a glass of water. 😊 Taking a small break will boost your learning and support your physical health.
Which browser should I use?
If you’re working in technical digital marketing, the answer is easy:
Use as many different browsers as you can.
This is because your work often revolves around tasks that require a web browser.
Don’t forget mobile browsers! The experience of visiting a website can be vastly different on mobile. The advertising and tracking technologies you deploy on the site might also have different outcomes depending on the device and operating system of the visitor.
Be mindful of this. Whether you’re building campaign landing pagesIn digital marketing, a landing page refers to a page on a website which the marketing campaign links to. Landing pages are created for ads and newsletter links, for example, but they can be used more generally with any marketing campaign (even non-digital ones)., or deploying web analytics measurement, or optimizing your site for speed and performance, or designing creatives for your ads, use as many different browsers and devices as you can.
Other than that, it really boils down to preference.
If you prioritize speed and performance, then choosing a browser that blocks trackersSoftware that typically runs in the user's web browser or device, designed to collect data from the user to a server. and reduces browser storage utilization might be a good idea. Choose a browser like Brave or Firefox (in Private Browsing mode).
If you prioritize privacy and security, then a browser that does its best to disarm trackersSoftware that typically runs in the user's web browser or device, designed to collect data from the user to a server. without necessarily blocking them entirely might be a good idea. The Safari browser is a good choice.
If you prioritize a strong developer toolkit together with a likelihood of being the browser most websites are designed for, choose the market leader, which would be Google Chrome.
The decision usually boils down to the market leaders. You can’t really go wrong with your choice, but you need to be prepared to occasionally use another browser in case your favorite websites don’t work properly in your favorite browser app.
Read on for a short quiz on this Topic before moving on. In the next Topic, we’ll dig deeper into the technical layer of the web browser, as we explore the critical processes of how the web browser and the web serverA machine connected to the World Wide Web, which is purpose-built to respond to HTTP requests from clients and for sending resources in response. communicate.
Key takeaway #1: Browser engine determines how the app works
Modern browser apps converge into a handful of popular browser enginesThe core software component of any web browser. Its most important task is to convert resources loaded from web servers into the dynamic representation of the web page. like WebKit (Apple), Blink (Google), and Gecko (Mozilla). The engine determines the core functionality of the browser: how it builds the page layout and rendersRendering happens when the web browser starts to convert the HTML document and its associated resources into the dynamic document the user sees and interacts with when visiting a web page. it, how navigation works, how cross-site security is enforced, and so on. The browser app is the user interface for the engine. Differences between browsers that use the same engine emerge when the apps implement engine configurations in different ways.
Key takeaway #2: Web standards make the browsing experience consistent
The term “web standards” is used to describe a set of agreed upon principles for how web browsers implement HTMLHyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used to describe how web documents should be rendered by the web browser. When you navigate to a web page, the web server hosting that page serves your browser an HTML source file that is then rendered into the visible and interactive web page., CSSCascading Stylesheets, or CSS, is a web technology that describes how the web page should look like and, up to a certain point, respond to interactions. If the HTML document defines the content, then CSS describes how that content should be structured, aligned, and painted in the browser., and JavaScriptJavaScript is the main language of the dynamic web. The web browser renders the HTML source file into a dynamic document that can be interacted with using JavaScript. (among other things) to produce the web browsing experience. Browsers are expected to follow these standards so that websites would work consistently across browser apps.
Key takeaway #3: Use different browsers when working in digital marketing
While web standardsA set of agreed principles for how web browsers should render web content and how that web content can be interacted with. seek to make the web browsing experience consistent, there are still enough differences in how browsers are built to make some websites behave differently, depending on which browser is used. For this reason, when you work in technical marketing – whether building campaigns, or implementing taggingNormally, tag references an HTML element (or node). In a marketing context, tags are used to denote HTML elements and JavaScript snippets specifically designed for collecting data to marketing vendors., or running experiments – it’s important to test with different browsers and devices so that you don’t inadvertently cause negative experiences for a subset of site visitors.