Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

highlight.js VS JSDoc

Compare highlight.js VS JSDoc and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

highlight.js logo highlight.js

Highlight.js is a syntax highlighter written in JavaScript. It works in the browser as well as on the server.

JSDoc logo JSDoc

An API documentation generator for JavaScript.
  • highlight.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-25
  • JSDoc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-17

highlight.js features and specs

  • Wide Language Support
    Highlight.js supports a comprehensive range of programming languages out of the box, making it versatile for various projects.
  • Automatic Language Detection
    It can automatically detect the programming language of a code block, reducing the setup time and effort for developers.
  • Customization
    Highlight.js offers numerous themes and customization options, allowing developers to easily tailor the syntax highlighting to match their application's aesthetic.
  • Lightweight and Fast
    The library is lightweight and performs efficiently, ensuring quick load times and a seamless user experience.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, Highlight.js benefits from community contributions and is free to use, modify, and distribute.

Possible disadvantages of highlight.js

  • Limited Dynamic Features
    Highlight.js is primarily used for static code block highlighting and lacks advanced features like real-time editing or complex code analysis.
  • Manual Updates
    New languages or updates may not be immediately available, requiring users to manually update the library or find alternatives for less common languages.
  • Performance Degradation on Large Files
    Highlight.js may experience performance issues when rendering very large code files, potentially slowing down page load times.
  • Dependency Management
    As with many JavaScript libraries, managing dependencies and ensuring compatibility with other libraries or frameworks can be challenging.

JSDoc features and specs

  • Improved Documentation
    JSDoc generates detailed HTML documentation from comments, which improves the maintainability and readability of the codebase.
  • Enhanced Code Understanding
    By using JSDoc, other developers can easily understand the purpose and usage of functions, parameters, classes, etc.
  • Autocomplete and Type Checking
    When integrated with editors like Visual Studio Code, JSDoc comments can provide better autocomplete suggestions and can be used for TypeScript-like type checking.
  • Consistency
    JSDoc enforces consistent documentation across the codebase, ensuring that all parts of the code are equally documented.
  • Easy to Use
    It is relatively straightforward to incorporate JSDoc comments into existing JavaScript code with minimal effort.
  • Supports Multiple Formats
    JSDoc supports various formats and tags, making it versatile for different documentation needs.

Possible disadvantages of JSDoc

  • Learning Curve
    New users may need some time to fully understand and utilize all the features and tags available in JSDoc.
  • Manual Effort
    Writing JSDoc comments requires a manual effort from developers, which can be time-consuming especially for large codebases.
  • Not Enforced
    Without proper enforcement, developers might omit JSDoc comments, leading to inconsistent documentation.
  • Overhead
    Too many comments can make the codebase cluttered and harder to navigate in some cases.
  • Limited to JavaScript
    JSDoc is primarily designed for JavaScript, which can be limiting if the project includes multiple languages.

Analysis of JSDoc

Overall verdict

  • Overall, JSDoc is a valuable tool for JavaScript developers looking for an effective way to document their code. It is widely regarded as good due to its ease of use, comprehensive feature set, and ability to produce well-structured documentation. The automatic generation of documentation from source code comments can significantly enhance the quality and accessibility of technical documentation, making it a recommended choice for many developers.

Why this product is good

  • JSDoc is a documentation generator for JavaScript, which is highly beneficial for developers as it allows them to create detailed and structured documentation directly from their code comments. This helps in understanding and maintaining codebases, particularly in large projects, by providing clear API documentation that is both easy to read and navigate. JSDoc supports a wide range of tags to cover different aspects of the code documentation, including function descriptions, parameter types, return values, and more. Moreover, it integrates well with other tools and workflows, improving documentation consistency and developer efficiency.

Recommended for

  • JavaScript developers who want to improve their code documentation.
  • Teams working on large or complex JavaScript projects needing clear and consistent API documentation.
  • Developers who prefer automating the documentation process directly from code comments.
  • Projects that require integration with other documentation or build tools.

highlight.js videos

No highlight.js videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

JSDoc videos

ep1 - Documenting your javascript code like a pro, setting up JSdoc

More videos:

  • Review - How JSDoc Support was Added to TypeScript pt1 - TypeScript PR Reviews
  • Review - How JSDoc Support was Added to TypeScript pt2 - TypeScript PR Reviews

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to highlight.js and JSDoc)
App Reviews
100 100%
0% 0
Documentation
10 10%
90% 90
Customer Feedback
100 100%
0% 0
Documentation As A Service & Tools

User comments

Share your experience with using highlight.js and JSDoc. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare highlight.js and JSDoc

highlight.js Reviews

We have no reviews of highlight.js yet.
Be the first one to post

JSDoc Reviews

20 Best Web Project Documentation Tools
It is to Sass what JSDoc is to JavaScript: a documentation system to build pretty and powerful docs in the blink of an eye.
Source: bashooka.com

Social recommendations and mentions

highlight.js might be a bit more popular than JSDoc. We know about 55 links to it since March 2021 and only 54 links to JSDoc. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

highlight.js mentions (55)

  • A better pkg.go.dev
    Every time a request come in, we forward it to the pkg.go.dev server, then append the highlight.js script to the response before sending it back to the client. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Day 19: Highlight'em up! 🔖
    It supports 192 languages, just like a browser highlighter:. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • YouTube Embeds Are Bananas Heavy and It's Fixable
    Now we only need to force bloggers to stop using GitHub Gist embeds. Hugo (and probably other static site generators) has built-in support for code snippets with syntax highlighting, and more dynamic sites can rely on highlight.js which removes dependence on third-party services. It's just insane, using heavy iframes for small code snippets. https://gohugo.io/content-management/syntax-highlighting/... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Glimmer DSL for Web Ruby Integration with JavaScript Libraries
    Glimmer DSL for Web is a Ruby-in-the-Browser Web Frontend Framework that enables Rubyists to finally have Ruby productivity and happiness in the Frontend via a simpler, more intuitive, more straightforward, and more productive library than all JavaScript libraries like React, Angular, Ember, Vue, Svelte, etc.... Glimmer DSL for Web's Rails sample app "Sample Selector" has been upgraded with Code Syntax... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Code Syntax highlighting in Next Js
    Let's get started by installing the highlight js. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

JSDoc mentions (54)

  • Documenting Web Components With Storybook
    One of the best tools available in Web Component development is the Custom Elements Manifest. It's a JSON representation of all your available components, covering all the attributes, methods, slots and events they support, powered by your JSDoc comments and TypeScript types. You can customize the manifest generation through plugins to support custom JSDoc comments, allowing you to power more pieces of your... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Just Say No to JavaScript
    I've seen several ways of annotating Javascript that IDEs seem to understand. They usually involve using comments before fields, classes, or functions. The most compliant one seems to be using [JSDoc](https://jsdoc.app/). JSDoc is mostly intended for generating documentation. However, the Typescript compiler can validate types (and can even interoperate with Typescript definitions), if you configure it as such. In... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • TypeScript (and JSDoc) vs JavaScript
    If you choose to use JSDoc instead of TypeScript, this only con that TypeScript has is gone, but a new one appears: JSDoc doesnt work very well with more complex types if you dont use classes to represent them. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How to document your JavaScript package
    Thanks to JSDoc it's easy to write documentation that is coupled with your code and can be consumed by users in a variety of formats. When combined with a modern publishing flow like JSR, you can easily create comprehensive documentation for your package that not only fits within your workflow, but also integrates directly in the tools your users consume your package with. This blog post aims to cover best... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Deep Dive: Google Apps Script - Testing APIs and Automating Sheets
    Note: For simplicity, I will omit the JavaScript documentation, but for a production grade code you may want to add the documentation (see jsdoc.app website for more). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing highlight.js and JSDoc, you can also consider the following products

prism.js - Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

JSOLint - Format, verify, and lint JSON effortlessly with our powerful Validator Tool. Generate pretty JSON and validate online for free. Simplify your JSON tasks

code-prettify - Code Prettify is an embeddable script that makes source-code snippets in HTML prettier.

Doxygen - Generate documentation from source code

Apache Tika - Apache Tika toolkit detects and extracts metadata and text from different file types.

DocFX - A documentation generation tool for API reference and Markdown files!