When you’re developing software, whether it’s a web application or website, you’ll need a developer to help you. Generally, we might say that front-end development is all that includes the user experience and user interface of an app. Front-end is everything that users see or can interact with.

But in detail, we might say that front-end web developer basic responsibilities are:

  • determining the structure and design of projects,
  • developing features to enhance user experience,
  • searching for a balance between functionality and design,
  • caring about the responsibility of the program or website,
  • creating and maintaining given UI/UX,
  • technical website optimization due to SEO principles,
  • testing the usability and handling bugs,
  • optimizing web pages for scalability and speed,
  • supporting design of new features,
  • gain feedback from users, customers, and collaborators.

The place of a front-end developer in the software development process

The front-end developer is responsible mainly for user experience, which in today’s world is a cornerstone of product success. The tidy, readable, and modern look of a website or application attracts clients or pleases users what is “be or not to be” for any program these days. 

In the programmers’ team, the role of a front-end developer is strictly between the UI/UX designers and back-end developers. As all projects usually start from UI/UX design, our developer’s job is to translate the static image of the project (i.e. Figma, Sketch) for an interactive and responsible website or app. What is more, the front-end programmer uses the API or different structure created by the back-end development team. It turns out the frontend developer is in the middle of all projects, that’s why cooperation and teamwork skills are key issues for that job.

Since the developer interacts with every other member of the team, soft skills such as teamwork, cooperation, and communication are also essential. Nowadays project engages more than one person. The Project Manager is responsible for client relations, project managing, and time estimation, UX/UI is responsible for the design, others are responsible for testing and QA. As a result, not only hard but also soft skills are very desirable in front-end development to ensure smooth and effective cooperation within a team.

What techs and tools does a front-end developer use?

The main coding languages most often used in front-end development are:

  • HTML,
  • CSS,
  • JavaScript.

Since on the begging front meant to be used with websites, those were primary website creation languages.

However today there are dozens of libraries, tools, and frameworks used by programmers to create apps faster and more interactive. As of today, the most popular frameworks are:

Where the last two of them are currently gaining position among others. Front-end may also use tools like Gatsby, made up for Progressive Web Apps, that combines i.e. ReactJS, Webpack, GraphQL, and more. AJAX (a combination of JS and XML) will also be useful to improve the smoothness of the website and partial website updates.

CSS is very important for user experience, modern front-end must be familiar with SASS, LESS, Bootstrap, or CSS GRID to make a modern, beautiful look of the project.

For coding version control the very well knowledge of GitHub is necessary and for continuous integration/delivery pipeline for cloud is used Jenkins, Docker, etc.

Since our programmer is also responsible for handling bugs some testing tolls like Webpack, Jasmine or Karma will be in use and for debugging Chrome Developer Console.

Finally as sometimes developer handles minor graphical bugs or changes, basic knowledge of Photoshop or Gimp is well seen.

Content Management Systems – WordPress

There is also one more thing when it comes to modern front-end tools and techniques. Nowadays websites are much more interactive than years before, so most websites also have a Content Management System (CMS)included. And WordPress is the most popular CMS currently. With this system, you can easily create pages with themes or if you want more complex website creations. Web or WordPress Developer has a lot of options using: PHP (with SQL database for example), JavaScript libraries, and plugins to freely create web content. One of the most popular plugins is WooCommerce, responsible for WordPress integration with online shops.

WooCommerce allows us to sell physical or digital goods thanks to the complexity and variety of options we can adjust all types of payments, shipments, delivery making an effective dropshipping platform, marketplace, or B2B.

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Modern web experience for successful product

The look and feel of a digital product is key factor of success. The interactivity and responsibility of the app extend the list of devices, browsers, or operating systems where it can be used. The variety of technologies combined with growing clients’ expectations leads to narrow specialization in the front-end. Most of the programmers choose their primary specialization, such as dedicated framework: React, Vue, etc. or choose to specialize in Web Development with CMS like WordPress.

Summing all up, front-end development is an interesting IT area, demanding diversity of skills, but highly challenging and rewarding because all the client see and interacts was done by You! 😊