What is Rendering?

Rendering generally means loading.

A webpage has two states:

• initial HTML
• rendered HTML

Rendering is what happens in between the two states.

The initial HTML contains only HTML and links to resources such as JavaScript, CSS and images that are needed to build the page. You can see the initial HTML when you right click on any webpage and select ‘View Source’.

The rendered HTML is also known as the DOM (Document Object Model). This is the initial HTML plus any changes made by the JavaScript files. You can see the DOM when you open your browser’s Developer Tools and click the Console tab.