Honestly, you’re the web developer - you tell me how browsers work!
It’s very similar. Browsers are based on the layout engine that they use. Firefox’s Gecko, chrome’s webkit. Webkit’s used practically everywhere on phones. I develop now for IE9, Chrome and FireFox. I’m glad to say it seems I won’t have to specify a version number for FF for much longer, because it’ll have similar release cycles as Chrome. Hopefully more silent than last time.
Funny you mention JIT compiler. The big news in some PHP circles is that PHP runs faster when you compile it - of course. But JIT does it very well, supposedly. Facebook’s HipHop has been around for a while and it’s the reason the site’s so fast for the cost.
(Source: notch)
