Do external stylesheets get loaded before the HTML?

Question

If I have external stylesheets being included in the section of my HTML page, will they be loaded before the HTML and immediately appl

Answer 1

Style sheets don't prevent the document from being downloaded, but the browser won't render the document until all of the linked stylesheets have been downloaded and loaded into the DOM.

This is so that the browser doesn't need to render the page twice (wasting time in the process), and so that an unstyled page won't flash in front of the user before the stylesheets have been downloaded and parsed.