What is the primary difference between CSS and JavaScript?

While JavaScript is a client-side scripting language, CSS is a style sheet language. CSS is used to style web pages, while JavaScript provides dynamic behavior to them.

Do we need both CSS and JavaScript for creating websites?

Yes, you need both CSS and JavaScript for creating websites, as these languages serve different purposes.

Is CSS a programming language?

No, CSS is not considered a programming language because it only styles web pages and does not contain any other instructions like other front-end languages.

Why do we require CSS?

CSS is the major aspect behind the look and appearance of websites. Fonts, layout, colors, styling, borders, shadows, and many other design aspects would not have been possible without CSS. In short, without CSS, websites wouldn't be as appealing as they seem to be with CSS.

What are the primary uses of JavaScript?

Using JavaScript, you can create websites, web applications, games, presentations, web servers, server applications, and animated elements.

Difference between CSS vs JavaScript: A Head-to-Head to Comparison

Web development is divided into two ends; front-end and backend. The front-end deals with the interactive nature of webpages, while the backend deals with the logic and database (data storage).

HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are the 3 major tools we used to build the frontend of any web page. All these 3 tools play a major role in web development. If we highlight JavaScript here, not only for the frontend, JS has some frameworks that can also support backend development. We cannot imagine any web page without these 3 front-end tools.

Here in this article, we have provided a head-to-head comparison between CSS and JavaScript - CSS vs JavaScript - because in many cases both of these tools crossover each other and both can be embedded in an HTML page with specific tags.

Difference Between CSS and JavaScript (CSS vs JavaScript)

What is CSS?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, which is used to style the web pages that include design, layout, and variations in the display. It was developed by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) so it could solve the problem with the HTML individual line styling. Everything that we see on a webpage with color and layout is because of CSS and its frameworks.

Now, usually, instead of using direct CSS code we use its frameworks because they can adjust the webpage layout and design according to the device size. This helps to produce web pages that are compatible with a wide range of devices and systems.

Benefits of Using CSS

1. Separate File

Before the introduction of CSS, we had to visit every tag if we want to style a particular element, but with CSS, we have a new markup language that is capable of styling the complete HTML file. With CSS, we can create different files that do not need to be a direct part of the HTML structure but can be imported into it.

2. Fast Load Pages

The CSS file can be cached into the browser memory after one request so the browser does not need to download the CSS file of a particular page if we visit it again.

3. Presentation

As we all know that CSS is used to color the static structure of HTML, CSS can even change the format of text and provide control over the HTML structure.

4. Search Engine Optimization

With CSS, we simply reduce the extra code, which we had to write if CSS was not there. This also helps search engines to estimate the real density of the page and it improves the ranking index of the website.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a high-level programming language that is used as a scripting language for both the client-side and server-side. Unlike other languages, JavaScript does not need any compiler, interpreter, or assembler to run its files, it can simply run inside the web browser. Often people have confused that JavaScript is related to Java because of the initials of both languages but both are different programming languages.

Features of JavaScript

JavaScript is an object-oriented programming language.
It can be used for both server-side as well as client-side scripting.
JS provides action on a static HTML page.
Most of its syntax is similar to the C programming language.
It is an interpreted programming language.
It executes at the client-side, which makes it faster compared to other programming languages .

CSS vs JavaScript: A Head-to-Head Comparison

CSS	JavaScript
Definition
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, which is used to style the HTML page.	JavaScript is a programming language that can enhance HTML pages by adding some dynamic functionality to its static nature.
Language
CSS is a markup language.	JavaScript is a high-level, object-oriented programming language.
Developed by
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)	Brendan Eich
Client-Side and Server-side
CSS code executes at the client-side, on the browser of the user.	JavaScript code can be executed either at the client or server-side.
Complicated Language
CSS is easy to understand because it is not a programming language and does not have a vast area to cover various fields.	As compared to the other 2 frontend languages i.e. HTML and CSS, JS is more complicated as it consists mostly all the syntax of high-level programming languages.
File Extension
CSS uses the file extension .css.	JavaScript uses the file extension .js or .jms
Errors
CSS code does not throw any error.	JavaScript code throws errors.
Resilience
As CSS code does not throw any error so even a broken code does not affect the complete web page.	If there is an error in the JavaScript code, then it could have some effect on the web page.
Browser support:
Every browser provides support to execute CSS files.	Even every major browser gives support for JS, but some browsers do not support some of the JavaScript libraries .
HTML tags:
<style> …. </style>	<script> ……</script>
Application
It is used to design the HTML page by adding color, layout, font style, etc.	JavaScript covers more aspects than CSS. JS can be used for security, games, special effects, form handling, etc.

Some Major Differences Between CSS and JavaScript

CSS is just used to organize the HTML pages and it cannot work alone. On the other hand, JavaScript is used to put action in the HTML pages and it can be executed alone at the browser console.
All the major browsers give a console on which we can execute the JavaScript code.
CSS cannot alter any element of the HTML page but JavaScript can do this and more.
JavaScript covers more market as compared to CSS.
JS ranks high in different indexes of the most popular programming languages.

Conclusion

Both CSS and JavaScript are the major tools for front-end development and even back-end developers cannot ignore these tools. The comparison is just to tell the major difference between these 2 tools i.e. CSS vs JavaScript and it does not mean that one is more important than the other.

In fact, we require both languages if we want to be web developers. It’s just that CSS is more underrated as compared to JavaScript but both languages have their significance and we cannot develop any web page without these two.

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Difference Between CSS vs JavaScript