I'm a little confused about mvc frameworks for the web...take angular for example. Are the "views" in angular the (tweaked out) html and CSS and the "models" just javascript/json-like objects that contain data like regular Ajax data? It seems to me that this is how it is (maybe not in full detail, but roughly it seems like this is it). Does angular even use CSS? And I don't really understand the controller.
I know javascript to a degree where I am not a total beginner but these frameworks make no sense to me, it's like everyone is speaking Greek or something when I look up tutorials. It would help to know I'm sort of on the right track or whether my thinking is wrong, in a ballpark sense.
Help is highly appreciated. Thank you.
It sounds like you're on the right track. In Angular specifically, yes, the views are written declaratively in HTML and special tags and attributes called directives. Models can be anything; often you'll see examples in Angular that use plain JavaScript objects as the models, but in a more complex app you might have special objects that have methods specific to the application. Controllers are just there to tie the two together—they take the models and make them available to the view via the scope, and events (like ng-click) call methods on the controllers which make changes to the models.
AngularJS implements Model-View-Controller paradigm by connecting your HTML (views) to your JavaScript objects (models) via two-way data binding.
It extends HTML by providing directives that add functionality to your markup and allow you to create powerful dynamic templates. You can also create your own directives, crafting reusable components that fill your needs and abstracting away all the DOM manipulation logic. Like most JavaScript MVC frameworks, it lets you work with any server-side technology as long as it can serve your app through a RESTful web API.
You can find more info here: