What is the primary function of the ‘defer’ attribute when added to a script tag?

Question

Web Development — Medium

What is the primary function of the ‘defer’ attribute when added to a script tag?

Accepted Answer

The 'defer' attribute instructs the browser to download the script in parallel without blocking HTML parsing. The script execution is then deferred until the entire HTML document has been fully parsed. This is distinct from 'async', which executes the script as soon as it finishes downloading, potentially interrupting the parsing process.