Front End Development

Front End Development involves creating the user-facing aspects of a website or application. Front End developers design the side of a website that it shown to the world, using a number of computer languages together to get the desired functionality and aesthetic.

Front End developers control the appearance of the website, how it is rendered by the browser, while Back End developers control how the site fundamentally works. Front End is client-side while Back End can be called server-side. [1]

HTML for structure, CSS for styling, and JavaScript for interactivity. HTML defines the content and structure of website as a whole. It defines the layout and structure of each page. HTML elements like headings, paragraphs, lists, and quotes identify specific types of content whose properties can then be adjusted to completely change the look of the site using CSS. You style HTML elements structured in a unique HTML layout with CSS to increase the visual appeal with colors, fonts, text sizes, and animations. JavaScript is dynamic, creating elements that the user interactions with like sliders, dropdown menus, form validation and animations.

Front End Developers

Front end developers ensure that websites are visually appealing, user-friendly, and responsive across different devices and screen sizes — which encompasses what Front End Development is. Their main responsibility is the user interface (UI). Front End developers work closely with designers and back end developers to create seamless and engaging user experiences that meet both aesthetic and functional requirements.

Resources

There are a number of excellent online resources that make excellent reference material. These are links to material and courses that can be used to learn, online frameworks to make your code easier to write, and libraries to extend what you can do.

The basic languages of Front-End Development are:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript

Popular JavaScript and CSS frameworks and libraries:

• Bootstrap
• W3.CSS
• HTML
• JSON
• XML
• jQuery
• Angular
• React

Handling APIs

• React
• GraphQL

Dataformats

• JSON
• XML

Tools

• Git

Notes

Resources

1. What is a Front-End Developer? W3Schools. <https://www.w3schools.com/whatis/whatis_frontenddev.asp>. Accessed 20 April 2024.