HomeELECTRONICSWhat is Front End Development? Who is a Front End Developer? Top 10 Front End Developer Skills you need to know
What is Front End Development? Who is a Front End Developer? Top 10 Front End Developer Skills you need to know
What is Front End Development?
Have you ever looked at a website and wondered how it works? All the buttons that you could click and the motions in your favorite website are a part of the front end development. Basically, all the visible site features are built through front end development.
The front-end layer helps you interact with the web, watch videos, perform actions like register to an online shopping site. Thus, the design, look and feel of the web is accomplished with the help of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript .
Who is a Front End Developer?
A front end developer is someone who implements web designs through programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The front end developers work with the design and outlook of the website. Whereas, the back end developers program what goes on behind the scenes like databases. If you head to any site, you can see the work of a front end developer in the navigation, layouts, and also the way a site looks different from your phone.
Web design is all about the way a website looks, while front end development is how the design actually gets implemented on the website. The front end developer is the person who is responsible for the implementation.
Top 10 Front End Developer Skills you need to know
If you have a look at the current job listings for front end developers, you will see that there is a clear and common pool of skills employers are looking for. Let’s have a look at the top 10 Technical skills that a front end developer must possess:
1. HTML/CSS
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language used for creating web pages. It is the most basic building block required for developing websites.CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the language used for presenting the document you create with HTML.
HTML is used for creating the foundation for your page. Whereas, CSS is used to create the layout of the page, color, fonts, and style. Both of these languages are absolutely essential to become a front end developer.
2. JavaScript/jQuery
Another important tool for a front end developer is JavaScript (JS). If you are trying to implement interactive features in your website such as audio and video, games, scrolling abilities, page animations, JS is the tool you need.
JavaScript consists of libraries like jQuery. It is a collection of plugins and extensions that make it faster and easier to use JS on your website. jQuery takes common tasks that require multiple lines of JS code and compresses them into a format that can be executed with a single line.
3. Frameworks
CSS and JavaScript frameworks are collections of CSS or JS files that perform different tasks by providing common functionality. Instead of starting with an empty text document, you start with a code file that has lots of JavaScript present already in it.
Frameworks have their strengths and weaknesses which makes it important to choose the best framework for the type of website you’re building. For example, some JS framework are great for building complex user interfaces, while others excel at displaying all of your site’s content.
4. Responsive Design
We use different gadgets like computers, phones, and tablets to look at web pages. The web pages adjust themselves to the device you’re using without any extra effort from your end. This is due to the responsive design. One major role of a front end developer is to understand the responsive design principles and how to implement them on the coding side.
It is an intrinsic part of CSS frameworks like the Bootstrap. These skills are all interconnected and so as you learn one you’ll often be making progress in the others at the same time.
5. Version Control/Git
Version control is the process of tracking and controlling changes to your source code so that you don’t have to start from the beginning if anything goes wrong. It is a tool that you can use to track the changes made previously so that you can go back to a previous version of your work and find out what went wrong without tearing the whole thing down.
6. Testing/Debugging
Testing is an important part of any project to keep the bugs away. Thus, a front end developer must possess the skill and ability to test and debug codes. There are different testing methods for web development. Functional Testing looks at a particular piece of functionality on your site and ensures it does everything according to the code.
Unit Testing is another method that tests the smallest bit of code and examines it individually for correct operation. Testing is a big part of the front end development process and there are frameworks to help you. Programs like Mocha and Jasmine are designed to speed up and simplify your testing process.
7. Browser Developer Tools
The modern web browsers come equipped with developer tools for testing and debugging. These tools allow you to test the web pages in the browser itself and finds out how the page is interpreting the code.
Browser developer tools usually consist of an inspector and a JavaScript console. The inspector allows you to see what the runtime HTML on your page looks like, what CSS is associated with each element on the page, and also allows you to edit your HTML and CSS and see the changes live as they happen. The JS console allows you to view any errors that occur as the browser tries to execute your JS code.
8. Web Performance
It is important to make sure that your website performs smoothly without any glitch. Web performance defines the amount of time it takes for your site to load. If you’re having problems with performance times there are steps you can take to improve them such as optimizing images and minifying CSS and JavaScript.
Programs like Grunt and gulp can be used to automate image optimization, CSS and JS minifying, and other web performance chores. It helps in making your website more efficient.
9. CSS Preprocessing
CSS Preprocessor is an advanced version of CSS. This is used to enhance the primary class of CSS to create better versions of websites. It is not just a language to improve the styling elements, but it helps the developers to skip tasks like writing CSS Selectors and color strings frequently.
There are three types of preprocessors available such as Sass, LESS and Stylus. You should write code that helps the preprocessor and in turn, it converts into CSS that will work for the website.
10. Command Line
GUI is an important part of web development and coding as well. But an all-purpose GUI is going to have its limitations for some specific applications. Sometimes, you may need to open a terminal on your computer where you can enter typed commands or command lines to get what you need.
Although the majority of your work is done through a GUI, you can add serious cred to your front end skills if you have a mastery of the command line.
These were some of the Technical Front end developer skills. Along with these, you should also be familiar with some other non-technical fields that will help you in career growth.
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