Web page

A webpage or web page is a document or resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a computer screen.

This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other webpages via hypertext links.

Webpages may be retrieved from a local computer or from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access only to a private network, e.g. a corporate intranet, or it may publish pages on the World Wide Web. Webpages are requested and served from web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Webpages may consist of files of static text stored within the web server's file system (static webpages), or the web server may construct the (X)HTML for each webpage when it is requested by a browser (dynamic webpages). Client-side scripting can make webpages more responsive to user input once in the client browser.
Color, typography, illustration and interaction

Webpages usually include information as to the colors of text and backgrounds and very often also contain links to images and sometimes other media to be included in the final view.

Layout, typographic and color-scheme information is provided by Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) instructions, which can either be embedded in the HTML or can be provided by a separate file, which is referenced from within the HTML. The latter case is especially relevant where one lengthy stylesheet is relevant to a whole website: due to the way HTTP works, the browser will only download it once from the web server and use the cached copy for the whole site.

Images are stored on the web server as separate files, but again HTTP allows for the fact that once a webpage is downloaded to a browser, it is quite likely that related files such as images and stylesheets will be requested as it is processed. An HTTP 1.1 web server will maintain a connection with the browser until all related resources have been requested and provided. Web browsers usually render images along with the text and other material on the displayed webpage.
[edit] Dynamic behavior
Main article: dynamic web page

Client-side computer code such as JavaScript or code implementing Ajax techniques can be provided either embedded in the HTML of a webpage or, like CSS stylesheets, as separate, linked downloads specified in the HTML. These scripts may run on the client computer, if the user allows them to, and can provide additional functionality for the user after the page has downloaded.