track: journey of a tap

7 articles · newest first

Flat illustration of a restaurant cutaway: a dining room with a customer on one side, a kitchen with a cook on the other

The dining room and the kitchen: which half of your app anyone can read

Every part of your app sits on one side of a wall. The frontend runs on the user's device and is readable by anyone; the backend runs on your servers. The rule for what goes where. Tap to see the split.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person pointing at an item on a large menu while a kitchen hatch passes out a plate

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An API is a menu of requests a server agrees to accept — order off it

Why your app talks to other companies' servers (OpenAI, Stripe), what an API key really is, and why the kitchen has to check every order. Tap through the menu.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min

Flat illustration of a friendly server cabinet with blinking lights connected by dotted lines to several phones

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Where your tap lands: the always-on computer that answers — and can see your secrets

A server receives requests and sends answers. What it can see that the browser can't, why your keys belong on it, and what "serverless" actually means. Tap to watch one respond.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min

Flat illustration of a customer handing an order slip across a café counter and getting a tray back

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Every tap sends a tiny message to a stranger's computer — this is what's inside

Method, headers, body, status code: what your phone actually sends, what comes back, and why the server has to check every word of it. Tap through a real one.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person looking up a name in a giant phone book, with a dotted line to a house on a hill

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Your phone knows a name, not an address — DNS is how it finds the site

Type a domain and something has to turn that name into a number your phone can actually reach. The internet's phone book, and what it means when you connect a custom domain. Tap to follow it.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person holding an addressed envelope and pointing at one highlighted house on a map

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The address bar is doing four jobs at once — here's each one

Every tap starts with a URL, and its four parts decide where your request goes and what it carries. Why nothing private should ever sit in one. Tap through the journey.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 4 min

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The half of your app you can't see — and why every security rule has to live there

Frontend, server, database, API, secrets: the parts behind the glass, drawn as the journey of one tap, and why the safety checks can only work on the far side of it. Tap to follow it.

Aliteq Team · Sep 25 · 6 min