Interview with the Browser Village: A Journey Through HTTP Basics, Cookies, and Browser History

A reporter visits the fictional Browser Village on April 1, the "Respect Day" of the OS community, to investigate a sensational incident where the old Internet Explorer allegedly struck Firefox and Chrome with a brick.

IE, portrayed as an elderly businessman, explains that its "business" is to fetch web pages for users, translating raw HTML into readable pages, handling tables, images, and form inputs, a task that has become increasingly demanding.

Firefox and Chrome respond, noting that IE's performance, security, and lack of updates have caused users to abandon it in favor of newer browsers.

IE then describes the HTTP request process: it builds a request packet (a "parcel") containing the method GET, the URL (e.g., www.mbi.com/hr ), and headers such as User-Agent: Microsoft IE11 , sends it through the operating system, and receives a response packet with a status code like 200 OK , after which it parses the HTML.

The conversation lists other status codes: 401 (unauthorized), 403 (forbidden), 404 (not found), 500 (server error), 503 (service unavailable), and explains redirects (e.g., 301 with a new URL) that require a new request.

IE mentions handling timeouts: if no response arrives within a certain period, it notifies the user and resends the request.

When the user logs in, IE switches to a POST request, sending credentials in the body, for example username=liuxin&password=secret .

The server may return a cookie containing a unique identifier. IE stores this cookie and includes it in subsequent requests to maintain the session.

IE explains that cookies have an expiration (typically 30 minutes); after expiration or when the browser is closed, the identifier is discarded, and a new cookie is issued.

Historical context follows: early web pages were simple HTML; later, plugins like Applet and Flash added functionality, then AJAX introduced dynamic content, and modern frameworks (jQuery, Bootstrap, ExtJS) further increased the workload for browsers.

Finally, IE laments the decline of its usage as mobile apps and smartphones (e.g., the iPhone) captured users' attention, leaving the browser's "business" dwindling.