How Web Browsers Work
A Web browser is client software on your computer that displays Web pages. Web browsers display data by interpreting the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that is used to build Web pages into viewable information. The code in the HTML files tells the browser how to display the data. The HTML file does not contain any graphics or multimedia in it, however, it tells the browser where it can find them on the server so that they can be displayed.
Web browsers also read links. If a link is linked to another Web page, the browser will find the specified URL and display that page. If the link is linked to a file that can be downloaded, the browser will download that file when the link is clicked.
There are many files that browsers cannot display, so you will need to download helper applications and plug-ins in order to view this multimedia from your Web browser.