Explained: What is Front-end development? | front-end developer skills and more

What actually Front-end Development is?

So have you ever looked at a website and wondered how it actually works, all those buttons that you could click and the motions in your favorite website are actually a part of the front-end development. Basically, all the visible side features are built through front-end development.

Now the front-end layer helps you interact with the web, watch videos, perform actions like register to an online shopping site, etc. Basically, the design, look, and feel of the web are accomplished with the help of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

So everything beautiful or moving that you see on your website is with the help of all of these three scripting languages, and this is what makes the front-end development.

Who is a front-end developer?

So a front-end developer is basically someone who implements these web designs through different programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Now 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 your databases. So if you head to any particular website you can see that the work of a front-end developer in the form of your navigation, layouts.

And also the way a site looks different from your phone so if you are opening the same site on your phone and on your laptop you will get to see the difference between those two outlooks.

Now web design is all about the way our 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.

Jobs and salary trends for a Front end developer role

Now according to a survey by TechRepublic. Web development is one of the 10 hottest technical skills in 2021.

Now the recent stats from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast that by 2026, the number of web development positions will grow by 15% as compared to the numbers from 2016.

Some of the key roles of a front-end developer

So for that, we have a front-end engineer

A junior front-end developer 

A front and software engineer or a front-end developer 

So the average salary for a front-end developer in India is around5,33,000 per annum. And talking about the salary range in the USA a senior front-end developer earns more than $100,000 on an average. Where is a junior front-end developer has an average salary of $76,000.

What are the skills that you need to become a front-end developer?

Top 10 technical skills that you must have to become a front-end developer 

Now 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.

1. HTML and CSS 

Now hypertext markup language is the standard markup language used for creating web pages, so it is the most basic building block required for developing websites. Where a CSS that is the cascading style sheets is the language used for presenting the documents you create with HTML.

So HTML creates the foundation for your page whereas CSS is used to create the layout of the page, the color, fonts, and style, and both of these languages are absolutely essential to become a front-end developer.

2. JavaScript/jQuery 

Now, this is another important tool for a front-end developer and if you are trying to implement interactive features in your website such as audio and video, games, scrolling abilities, page animations, then javascript is the tool you need.

And javascript consists of libraries like jQuery, so it is basically a collection of plugins and extensions that make it faster and easier to use javascript on your website. And jQuery also takes common tasks that require multiple lines of JavaScript code and compresses them into a format that can be executed with a single line.

3. Frameworks 

So the CSS and JavaScript frameworks are the collections of CSS or JavaScript files that perform different tasks by providing common functionality. So instead of starting with an empty text document, you start with a code file that already has lots of Java's represent in it.

Now frameworks have their strengths and weaknesses, making it important to choose the best framework for the type of website you are building. For example - Some JavaScript frameworks are great for building complex user interfaces, while others excel at displaying all of your site's content.

4. Responsive design 

Now we use different gadgets like computers, phones, and tablets to look at the web pages, so the web pages themselves to the device you are using without any extra effort from your end. 

This is actually due to the responsive design, one major role of a front-end developer is to understand the responsive design principles and also how to implement them on the coding side.

It is definitely an intrinsic part of the CSS frameworks like the bootstrap and these skills are all interconnected and so as you learn one you will 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 actually went wrong without tearing the whole thing down so this basically saves a lot of your time.

6. Testing/Debugging 

Now testing is an important part of any project to keep the bugs away. So a front-end developer must possess the skill and ability to test and debug the codes.

Now there are different testing methods for web development

Functional testing looks at a particular piece of functionality on your site and also ensures that it does everything according to the code.

We also have another testing called unit testing which tests the smallest bit of code and examines it individually for correct operation. So testing is a big part of the front-end development process and there are frameworks to help you.

Also, there are programs like mocha and jasmine that are designed to speed up and simplify your testing process.

7. Browser developer tools

So the modern web browsers come equipped with developer tools for testing and debugging. These tests allow you to test the web pages in the browser and find out how the page interprets the code.

The browser developer tools usually consist of an inspector and a JavaScript console. So the Specter allows you to see what the runtime HTML on your page looks like. And 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.

Also, the JavaScript console allows you to view any errors that occur as the browser tries to execute your JavaScript code.

8. Web performance

Now it is very important to make sure that your website performs smoothly without any glitch, so web performance defines the amount of time it takes for your site to load.

If you are having problems with performance times, you can take steps to improve them, such as optimizing images and minifying CSS and JavaScript.

9. CSS pre-processing 

Now you have already seen how HTML and CSS are two important scripting languages, now the CSS preprocessor is an advanced version of CSS.

So this is used to enhance the primary class of CSS to create better versions of websites, it is not just a language to improve these styling elements but it also helps the developers to skip tasks like writing these CSS selectors and color strings frequently.

10. Command line

GUI is the graphic user interface 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 the typed commands or command lines to get what you actually need.

Although the majority of your work is done through a GUI you can add serious credibility to your front-end skills if you have a mastery of the command line.

Top companies hiring for front-end developers 

Now talking about some of the top MNCs that are hiring for front-end developers the companies include Capgemini, IBM Accenture, Oracle, Neo soft technologies, Genpact, and many more.