web worker

Definitions

1. A mechanism for running JavaScript in a background thread separate from the main page thread, preventing CPU-intensive tasks from blocking the user interface. Web workers communicate with the main thread via message passing and cannot directly access the DOM. They're essential for heavy computation (image processing, data parsing) in the browser.

   In plain English: A way to run heavy JavaScript calculations in the background so the web page stays responsive — like having a helper do math in another room.

   Example: We moved the CSV parsing into a web worker so the UI stays responsive even when processing a 500MB file in the browser.

Related Terms

• PWA
• service worker
• progressive web app
• HTTP/2
• HTTP/3
• Latency Budget
• Lightweight Thread
• Lock Contention
• Mailbox
• Process Pool
• Read Lock
• Read-Write Lock
• Thread Starvation
• Threading Model
• Volatile