Despite how long this is, it leaves out very many details. I'd like to see a description that goes in detail into protocols, code and circuitry signals at every step.
What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
11–20 of 44 posts
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#12Pretty cool.
Since everyone is going to mention what it misses, here's this pet peeve of mine: when I type Google.com it redirects the URL to google.[countrycode] and then I have to jump through hoops to get the .com, the English version and the global results.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#13I'd also like to see what's going on within the Google servers and data centers. Also, a flow diagram would be awesome. I am hoping to show this to my wife to have her appreciate the engineering involved.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#14Question: Where is text rendered? on the gpu or cpu?
That depends on the browser renderer. However, I suppose most windows browsers use Direct2D for 2D rendering, which is Microsoft's 2D API for the GPU.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#15Despite how long this is, it leaves out very many details. I'd like to see a description that goes in detail into protocols, code and circuitry signals at every step.
This is still very much a work in progress, there are 12 open pull requests and lots of issue reports. When I first saw this project a few weeks ago it was much smaller and less complete, so I'm looking forward to how it will look like in a couple more weeks.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#16Don't forget key pinning checks... (google.com will be in browsers' preload lists, but for other domains, there's an hpkp check)
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#17Pretty cool. Since everyone is going to mention what it misses, here's this pet peeve of mine: when I type Google.com it redirects the URL to google.[countrycode] and then I have to jump through hoops to get the .com, the English version and the global results.
go to www.google.com/ncr (no country redirect) and it won't redirect you any more.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#18I mentioned the gethostbyname call during an interview with this question. The interviewer reminded me that gethostbyname was deprecated and we had a short discussion about the recently discovered vulnerability in the glibc implementation of it.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#19Question: Where is text rendered? on the gpu or cpu?
That depends on a lot of factors but regardless even if it's ultimately rendered on the GPU it's first generated on the CPU as in glyphs are rendered and put in a glyph cache. Those might be cached in textures and then used to render text with the GPU as appropriate.
Re: What happens when you type Google.com into your browser's address box
#20Now I want to be asked this question at an interview, so I can describe what happens from the start of the process: not the Enter key bottoming out, but from the thought and prefrontal cortex activity; to the motor cortex; describing the action potentials in nerves and how they work, neurotransmitters, charge-hopping via nodes of Ranvier and so forth; all the way down to actuating the muscles and the molecular biology in that; actuating the bones, then onto bottoming out the Enter key...
... then finishing up with the eyes receiving the data; edge-detection in the retina [1]; transfer to the visual cortex and the several layers in the build-up there; eventually finishing up with the sense of disappointment you get when you realise you typed in a misspelling that google couldn't correct for.
[1] Pandemonium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemonium_architecture) is my favourite theory of anything anywhere. Basically it sees the nerves as a bunch of simple-minded demons yelling out, and the bigger demons hear the loudest below them and yell out, so forth up the chain :)