Difference between HTML and CSS

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You may have seen a lot of memes about HTML, CSS, HTML without CSS, HTML with CSS like this,

Yes, they are true. That's what a webpage also looks like with and without CSS.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a markup language and a fundamental building block for web applications. There is no logic involved in this like in programming languages. HTML consists of tags that define the structure of a document. Each tag serves a different purpose. For example, the <p> tag is used to surround the text in a paragraph, <h1>, <h2, ..., are used to define headings, <a> is used to define hyperlinks, and so on.

Example:

<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
  
</body>
</html>

What is CSS?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It describes how HTML elements should be displayed and are used to add styling to the HTML elements like colors, spacing, fonts, backgrounds, layouts, and many more. CSS consists of selectors and declarations. A selector can be an HTML tag, class, or id. Inside selectors, we put declarations. Declarations are "property-value" pairs. The combination of a selector and declarations within the selector is called a "CSS rule".

Example:

body {
  background-color: #764af1;
  padding: 15px;
}

h1 {
  font-family: "Gill Sans", "Gill Sans MT", Calibri, "Trebuchet MS",
    sans-serif;
  color: rgba(10, 44, 52, 0.843);
}

p {
  font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
  color: aliceblue;
}

So HTML is used to build a document, and on the other hand, CSS is used to style that document.

Difference between HTML and CSS

HTML	CSS
HTML is used to build the website.	CSS is used to style the website.
It is a markup language because there is no logic involved.	It is a design language because it is used to style the website.
We can't write HTML inside CSS	We can write CSS inside HTML (Inline or in a separate file)
Easy to learn again because there is no logic involved in this.	Somewhat hard to learn compared to HTML
Used to define the structure of a webpage	Used to define the design of a webpage
File extension: .html or .htm	File extension: .css

Example of HTML with and without CSS

This is what the Google homepage looks like with plain HTML code:

As you can see in the screenshot above, the website is very plain and unappealing. Let's make it attractive by adding styling with CSS.

This is how the same webpage appears after CSS has been added:

Our website is now more fascinating than it was before.

Which is Easier, CSS or HTML?

HTML is far more straightforward to learn and implement. There's nothing to be concerned about. On the other hand, CSS can be confusing, and difficult to debug the styles when anything goes wrong, or things don't perform as planned. However, if you've gained some good experience through building projects, CSS will be second nature to you.

Is CSS Better than HTML?

HTML and CSS serve two completely different purposes. While HTML is used to define the structure of a webpage, CSS is for styling that webpage. So we can't compare both of them.

Can We Use CSS without HTML?

HTML is the fundamental building block for websites. CSS is like an addition to HTML, so clearly, we can't use CSS without HTML.

Learn More about HTML and CSS

Conclusion

In this article,

We got an idea of HTML and CSS, and they differ in use.
We studied the basic differences between HTML and CSS in an application, as well as how webpages seem without CSS.
We found that HTML is easier than CSS.
We also learned we couldn't use CSS without HTML.

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