Question

I learnt that JADE is a template language and it is preferred engine for express.

What are the advantages of using JADE instead of html ? Is it possible to use html directly instead of using jade ?

Answer 1

Jade has a cleaner, more readable syntax and comes with filters and helpers: https://github.com/visionmedia/jade#a7

If you’re going to migrate HTML files to jade, this converter might come handy:
http://html2jade.aaron-powell.com/

…but you can also use HTML.

app.set('view engine', 'html');

http://expressjs.com/guide.html#view-rendering

I’m using EJS ( http://code.google.com/p/embeddedjavascript/) as the rendering engine in my express app, but keep a .html suffix on the template files like this:

app.set('view engine', 'html');
app.register('.html', require('ejs'));

(requires ejs be installed, which you can easily do via npm install ejs)