How does Gecko (or any other layout engine) render a document/page?

Question

It was kinda hard to go through Gecko's documentation to see how it renders a web page.

I'm doing some performance analysis for my projects across the leading browsers to see how to improve response time. I am aware of optimization techniques out there but I don't really understand their basis--which I believe would be resolved if I knew how browser engines do their thing.

If any of you know how, I hope you don't mind sharing it. :)

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

I gave a tech talk on material that might be useful a few years ago: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=a2_6bGNZ7bA . It wasn't the best of presentations, but I think I did manage to convey some useful information despite that. (Slides at http://dbaron.org/talks/2008-11-12-faster-html-and-css/slide-1.xhtml or http://dbaron.org/talks/2008-11-12-faster-html-and-css/master.xhtml .)