What is the difference between contract type and address?

Question

I have seen here that:

Contract TokenCreator {
    function createToken(bytes32 name)
        public
        returns (OwnedToken tokenAddress)
    {
        // Create a new `Token` contract and return its address.
        // From the JavaScript side, the return type
        // of this function is `address`, as this is
        // the closest type available in the ABI.
        return new OwnedToken(name);
    }
    // some other code

}

From the function definition you can see that it returns a value of type OwnedToken how is this value type different from address type? Why not just say the return type is an address?

Answer 1

Because, the return type is not address but a contract (OwnedToken) with public methods and properties that you could call (from solidity).

On the javascript side or (other web3 client library), the closest type available in ABI is address (as mentioned in the comments in the code blocks of your question), so that is what it gets converted to.