Coding for Web Design 101: How HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Work

On the other hand, those who like CSS — and want the current technologies to support developers and end users equally — may prefer CSS Module. With CSS Module, all the declarations go into separate CSS files. It’s therefore impossible to implement dynamic styles like CSS-in-JS, as we can’t implement any JavaScript in CSS files. The minified CSS files generated with the final build can be cached by the browser to improve the successive page load times. CSS-in-JS will execute JavaScript to parse CSS from JavaScript components, and then inject these parsed styles into the DOM. The more components more will be the more time taken by the browser for the first paint.

  • 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.
  • See the Pen Component theming with the styled-components library by Rahul Chhodde (@_rahul)
    on CodePen.
  • The hardest part of coding is getting started — but once you learn the basics, it’ll be easier to learn more advanced programming languages.
  • All three files must be in the same directory — a folder on your computer.
  • If you’ve ever wondered how long it takes to become a front end developer, it’s important to understand how websites are built with these three basic languages.
  • JavaScript (JS) is another key language for web page design and inserts dynamic text into HTML client-side.

Even given the test results above, we’d argue that CSS animations are the better choice. The key is that as long as the properties we want to animate do not trigger reflow/repaint (read CSS triggers for more information), we can move those sampling operations out of the main thread. If an element is promoted as a layer, animating transform properties can be done in the GPU, meaning better performance/efficiency, especially on mobile. In terms of performance, there is no difference between implementing an animation with CSS transitions or animations.

This is a first level heading in HTML. With CSS, I will turn this into red color

JavaScript is a programming language that changes the appearance of web pages, and it is dynamic. CSS is static and related to the web pages’ color, position, size, and style, and the appearance is beautiful. JavaScript comes into the picture if you need to give colors based on the season or any other reasons. If you need to apply any logic for the styling, you have to use JavaScript, whereas if it is only the styling, you use CSS. It’s supported by all of the modern web browsers, and it is used on almost every site on the web. According to a recent Stack Overflow survey, JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language by developers around the world, with 67.7 percent of developers putting it to use in their work.

CSS vs JavaScript

I will call the main HTML file index, the main CSS file styles, and the main JavaScript file scripts. When you start learning web development, you can usually try a series of basic challenges on the principles of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. However, each challenge happens in a sandbox environment, and does not test you on multiple languages at once.

JS HTML DOM

Also, every internet browser has a committed JavaScript motor to execute it. It has an API for working with content, clusters, dates, ordinary articulations, and necessary control of the DOM. Nonetheless, depending on the host condition in which it is implanted, the dialect itself does not hold any I/O, such as organizing, capacity, or illustrations offices.

CSS vs JavaScript

By integrating these best practices into your workflow, not only will your code be more efficient, but you’ll also reduce the likelihood of bugs and improve maintainability. Crafting a well-performing website or application doesn’t just hinge on knowing how to use tools but also on utilizing them effectively. Adopting best practices ensures that your CSS and JavaScript are efficient, maintainable, and error-free.

Languages

This can be a huge concern for you if you regularly use your browser’s developer tools for debugging, but also for beginners, as it’s essential for them to understand the code they wrote. Although this is a great way to create absolutely unique selectors that won’t cause any CSS specificity problems, the source code doesn’t look very pretty. Alternatively, some CSS-in-JS libraries such as Radium add inline CSS on the fly to the HTML instead of generating unique classes. CSS-in-JS libraries provide us with a new approach for writing CSS.

Most modern websites come with a menu button that can be clicked to display a selection of areas on the website that you can navigate to. The menu button usually reveals a small menu on the side of the page, which adds interactivity to the page itself. All of this is powered by JavaScript and can make your website appear to be more modern and sophisticated. An example of this is when you use media queries, where you define different style rules for different kinds of screens (resolutions). You can access any elements through the Document Object Model API (DOM) and make them change however you want them to. We access each of the elements we want to work on by “selecting” them.

Grasping JavaScript Basic

To be a front end developer, you’ll need to be proficient in all three of these languages, as they are constantly working together. Ideally you’ll learn HTML first, then CSS, and then finish with JavaScript, as they build on each other in that order. A classic example of how JavaScript works is the menu button that you’re used to seeing on the top corner of most websites. You know the one — the three stacked lines that show a list of website sections you can visit when clicked.

CSS vs JavaScript

Both of them are classified under the same CSS-based umbrella in this article. Notice how the HTML files and folders are the same level of depth within the greater neighborhood folder. In order to reference files that are within folders at the same level, you need to start your filepath with the folder name instead of a file name. So, if you wanted to reference the bank.css file from within bank.html, you would use scripts/bank.css as the file path. As your site grows, you will find that some pieces of CSS and JavaScript are reuseable, and can be linked to multiple HTML files.

Difference Between CSS and JavaScript (CSS vs JavaScript)

CSS if often the best choice for basic animations like hover effects, transitions, and small, non-interactive animations. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is commonly used for styling web pages. But it also provides a powerful and straightforward way to create animations. In this article, we will explore the key differences between CSS and JavaScript animations, provide code examples, and guide you on when to choose one over the other. Most popular frameworks of JavaScript are ReactJS, AngularJS and VueJS. These are front-end languages whereas NodeJS is the framework developed for backend.

Always test across multiple browsers to ensure compatibility and address discrepancies. Both CSS and JavaScript, as primary web technologies, have nuances that, when addressed, can significantly speed up your website or application. While comments are invaluable for explaining complex code, excessive or obvious comments add bloat. The element slides when clicked, due to the combined efforts of CSS transitions and JavaScript-triggered class changes.

Advantages of JavaScript Animations

As an app grows bigger, using CSS-in-JS can get complicated easily, considering all the drawbacks of this concept. A lot of work goes into converting a design system into CSS-in-JS, and in my opinion, no JavaScript developer would want to deal with that. The CSS-in-JS solution is ideal when you are css web development dealing with a smaller application for which performance is a lower priority. It may not be ideal when dealing with a performance-critical application with a huge design system. For each component styled with CSS-in-JS, there could be 100 style blocks that must be parsed first, then injected.

Examples of CSS-in-JS Libraries

Some real estate developers decide to buy up a lot with a house on it, demolish the house, and put in some fancy apartments. Imagine that in this neighborhood, one of the buildings is a pizza shop called Neighborhood Pizza (great name). But, Neighborhood Pizza is struggling, and Domino’s (a huge pizza chain) decides to buy the property and serve the neighborhood instead.

The W3C advances a free CSS approval benefit toward CSS records. If you’ve ever wondered how long it takes to become a front end developer, it’s important to understand how websites are built with these three basic languages. While some websites pull in more complicated coding languages, it’s completely possible to make an exciting, beautiful, interactive website using just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If HTML represents the building blocks of a website, CSS is a way to shape and enhance those blocks. CSS is a style sheet language used to specify the way different parts of a webpage appear to users. In other words, it’s a way to add some style and additional formatting to what you’ve already built with HTML.