Advantages and Disadvantages of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP

 The thing which we have to keep in mind is that all these technologies HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP are used in Web Development. These are involved in creation of Websites. Some languages such as HTML and CSS are concerned with Frontend of Website. While, JavaScript and PHP with backend of website.

Advantages and disadvantages of each language are given below.

HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a scripting language used for creation of web pages. HTML document contains Hyperlinks and Markup Tags. These Markup Tags and Hyperlinks are organized for creation of web pages.

Advantages of HTML

Some of the key advantages of HTML are given below.

1. Forgiving Language

The main advantage of HTML is its forgiveness. This language will never through an error, even if you don’t write the syntax of HTML properly. This language will never complain, even if you don’t  write its tags properly.

2. Easy to Understand

HTML is an easy language to learn and understand. This is the language to which every person can understand because its syntax and tags are in a complete simple English. It is simple enough as compared to CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

3. Basic Skeleton of Website

Another advantage of HTML is that it creates the basic skeleton of any website. HTML is powerful enough that you only using the HTML can create a basic skeleton of a website, even if you are not using CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

4. Integration

Major advantage of HTML is it favors joint work. It allows the other languages such as CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python etc to integrate in its syntax. This property of unity strengthens HTML. 

5. Object Oriented Language

HTML is an object oriented language, it supports the classes as well as id. Being an object oriented language, HTML provides a great advantage to programmers. Object orientation provides them a facility to program the real world entities, which can be reused. This makes the life of a programmer easy.

Disadvantages of HTML

Now the disadvantages of HTML are as under.

1. Complex Syntax

The complex syntax of HTML is its biggest disadvantage. The programmer has always an headache of matching the opening and closing tags. In case there are too many nested tags, it becomes difficult to track which tag is open where and close where.

2. Static Websites

Another disadvantage, with HTML you can create only static websites. For dynamic effects on your website, CSS and JavaScript are also required. Hence HTML has limitations that it as a stand alone language can not create interactive effects.

3. No Storage Facility

HTML can get data from users through forms but this data is unnecessary until a database compatible language and a database are not integrated with HTML. Hence HTML itself provides no compatibility for back end.

4. Error Tracking and Debugging

HTML is a forgiving language but sometimes this forgiveness becomes the biggest headache for programmers. HTML is not a language which debugs the code and through an error if you are making a mistake in code. After execution, if any error occurs then the programmer has to debug the code, track the error and correct it.

 

CSS

CSS stands for cascading style sheet. HTML builds the structure of a website. CSS beautifies the website. CSS is normally used to give a good look to our website and to make it responsive and user friendly.

Advantages of CSS

Main advantages of CSS are

1. Layout and Styling

CSS provides the advantage to programmers for creating the layout and styles of a website. CSS is used to create the basic layout of a webpage. It is also responsible for the styling of webpage such as its color, size, opacity and alignment. It also beautifies the text using different fonts.

2. Responsiveness

Second biggest advantage of CSS is responsiveness. CSS provide the facilities such as media queries, flex box and grid to make the websites responsive. This makes the websites able to adjust according to the device they are displaying.

3. Dynamic Effects

Another advantage of CSS is that with the help of CSS you can create dynamic effects on your website. CSS has properties such as animation and transition that create the dynamic effects on the website.

4. Easy To Implement

For CSS you have the advantage that you don’t require any external library or code editor to install on your system. It can be easily implemented as inline CSS, in page CSS and External CSS.

 

Disadvantages of CSS

Disadvantages of CSS are the following.

1. No Back End Compatibility

Disadvantage of CSS is that it focuses on the styling and beauty of the website. It has no compatibility with the back end. How beautiful you design the login page, but with CSS you can never store the data from the user in the database.

 

2. Dependent Language

Another disadvantage of CSS and a bitter truth about CSS is it’s dependency on HTML. Yes, alone CSS, without HTML has no meaning. As CSS is used for styling the web page. So, if you don’t have a basic HTML page, then to which thing you will style with CSS.

3. Error Detection

Same like HTML, CSS have no debugging facility which track the errors in the language and provide suggestions to programmers about correction of errors. All the errors are to be identified and corrected by the programmer himself without any idea of where the error actually is.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a client side scripting language that enables us to enhance the static web pages, by providing dynamic, personalized and interactive content.

Advantages of JavaScript

With the advantages below of JavaScript, programmer life becomes easy.

1. Interactive Websites

The super advantage of JavaScript is to make the static web pages attractive and interactive. Users visit those sites frequently which provide the personalized and interactive experience to users. JavaScript provides both of these facilities.

2. Program the Browser

JavaScript has an advantage to program the browser. Yes, with the help of Browser Object Module, browsers can be programmed. BOM has many built in methods such as alert, prompt, go, forward, reverse etc by which you can play with the browser and program it.

3. System Date Manipulation

JavaScript has an advantage for us to play with Date and Time. If we need to insert some specific date and time in some specific format at any place of our document. JavaScript Date object has a lot of built in methods to allow us to do so.

4. Decision Making

Advantage of decision making is not being able to neglect, because this client side scripting language uses conditions to make decisions from the system. This decision making on user interaction is what exactly engages the user. 

5. Back End Compatibility

JavaScript is a powerful language, it can connect the front end of a website with a database. JavaScript has full back end compatibility and using node JS, it can store the data of users from the site, into the database.

 

Disadvantages of JavaScript

Everything has disadvantages, JavaScript has too.

1. Dependent Language

First disadvantage of JavaScript is it’s dependency on HTML, which means it can not work without HTML. That is, if there is no HTML web page, then to whom JavaScript will make it interactive.

2. Speed Down

JavaScript has a disadvantage of speed down because JavaScript is an interpreter based language. It translate the JavaScript code line by line, also the interpreter first himself interpret the code 

and then send it to the machine. This process slow downs the speed of the browser.

3. Data Types Creeping

As JavaScript deals with the data types himself. We have to just declare any variable and then use it. This makes some time confusion between programmers and JavaScript interpreters. Programmer has created some variables as String and JavaScript is treating it as integer. This is a very big flaw in JavaScript.

 

PHP

PHP stands for Personal Home Page. It is a general purpose scripting language. It is used in the back end of websites to connect the websites with the database. And then store and manipulate the data from the database.

Advantages of PHP

There are huge advantages of PHP. Some are written here.

1. Server Side Script

The big advantage of PHP is that it is a server side scripting language. It can open, close, read, write and delete files on the server.

2. Data Organization

Another advantage of PHP is that it can collect data from users through “forms” and store this data in databases in organized form.

3. Data Encryption

Major advantage of PHP is its ability to encrypt the data. PHP have specific methods POST which deals with the encryption of data.

 

4. Compatibility

Another benefit of PHP is that it supports all major databases and is compatible with all the servers. This compatibility feature steps up PHP from its other competitive languages.

5. PHP is Free

Another reason for PHP widespread use is, it’s free of cost. Unlike other server side scripting languages, PHP is a free source. Anyone can download PHP and use it free of cost.

Disadvantages of PHP

Major flaws in PHP are discussed below.

1. Installation

Disadvantage of PHP is that it never works until you have downloaded, installed and configured it properly. This extra step before writing the actual code makes PHP difficult language for the new programmers.

2. Security

Another disadvantage of PHP is it’s open source. Anyone can see the PHP source code and if find any bugs, can be used to harm the people of the PHP.

3. Error Debugging

The biggest disadvantage of PHP is it does not provide any debugging facility. If any error occurs, it's a programmer's headache to find and correct the error. PHP is not responsible for error handling.