Browser APIs

Core browser APIs for DOM, storage, networking, and workers.

All Articles (4 articles)

  • Web Workers and Worklets for Off-Main-Thread Work

    Web Foundations / Browser APIs 15 min read

    Concurrency primitives for keeping the main thread responsive. Workers provide general-purpose parallelism via message passing; worklets integrate directly into the browser’s rendering pipeline for synchronized paint, animation, and audio processing.

  • Service Workers and Cache API

    Web Foundations / Browser APIs 17 min read

    A comprehensive exploration of offline-first web architecture, examining how the Service Worker API (W3C Working Draft, January 2026) enables network interception and background processing, how the Cache API provides fine-grained storage for request/response pairs, and how update flows ensure clients transition safely between versions. These APIs form the foundation of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): service workers intercept fetches and decide response sources, Cache API stores those responses durably, and the lifecycle model ensures exactly one version controls clients at any time.

  • Fetch, Streams, and AbortController

    Web Foundations / Browser APIs 20 min read

    A comprehensive exploration of the modern web’s network primitives, examining how the Fetch Standard (WHATWG Living Standard, January 2026) unifies request/response handling across all platform features, how the Streams Standard enables incremental data processing with automatic backpressure, and how AbortController/AbortSignal (DOM Standard Section 3.3) provide composable cancellation semantics. These three APIs form an integrated system: Fetch exposes response bodies as ReadableStreams, Streams propagate backpressure through pipe chains, and AbortSignal enables cancellation at any point in the pipeline.

  • DOM API Essentials: Structure, Traversal, and Mutation

    Web Foundations / Browser APIs 22 min read

    A comprehensive exploration of DOM APIs, examining the interface hierarchy design decisions, selector return type differences, and the modern Observer pattern for efficient DOM monitoring. The DOM Standard (WHATWG Living Standard, last updated January 2026) defines a layered inheritance model where each interface adds specific capabilities while maintaining backward compatibility—understanding this design reveals why certain methods exist on Element rather than HTMLElement and why selector APIs return different collection types with distinct liveness semantics.