Front end: An example
Let us take an example of an eCommerce site ‘firstcry’ which is an app for children. The first page of the app asks you to opt for shopping or parenting. If you choose ‘parenting’, you will get options regarding the age, gender, and other details of your child, and the site lets you into the professional/consultant according to your details and requirements.
If you choose ‘shopping,’ it shows you the various products available, and you can choose anything from the plenty of stuff. When you long-press on any product, it shows you similar stuff. If you add it to your wishlist, it notifies you when the price drops or when the product is limited edition.
It is so interactive and easy to use that even a novice user can use it with minimal or no difficulty.
Who do you think makes it so interactive and easy?
A front-end developer!
So, the front-end is all that a user can see on any application. Since we depend on one or the other application for most of our tasks such as paying bills, shopping, groceries, booking movie tickets, gaming, watching movies over OTT platforms, connecting to friends, etc.; there is an application for everything we do. And there is a front-end developer behind the design of every application.
Front-end developers are in demand everywhere in the world, across every industry. The skill gap makes it difficult to fill the positions of required trained and skilled front-end developers. Apart from doing a job in front-end development, you can freelance as a front-end developer as well. This is the best part of being a front-end developer.
Let’s discuss how to become one.
What is a Front-End Developer?
Every application has a user interface which is the part of an application or website designed for consumer usage. This user interface is what is referred to as the front end. So, a front-end developer is a professional who is responsible for designing and implementing this interface. A user requires this interface to access the app in question. A web designer has to create the appearance of the website and its design. The front-end developer ensures that the design works properly online by utilizing front-end coding languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
A back-end developer is the one who works behind the scenes of working on an application or website. On the other hand, a full-stack developer is a professional who can develop both the front-end, the back-end and also integrates it with a database. For now, we will focus only on the front-end development.
Today, the gap between the front-end and back-end is narrowing down because most of the tasks are carried out by a front-end developer itself. Also, there are full-stack engineers who have sound knowledge of full-stack development as well as experience in managing projects and are experts in configuration, management, and monitoring of computer systems and networks.
Front End Developer: Roles and Responsibilities
As a front-end developer, you are required to:
- Finalize web page structure and design
- Build features to improve the users’ experience
- Maintain a balance between aesthetic and functional design
- Develop reusable code such that it can be used in future
- Ensure that the design is capable of running on a smartphone
- Ensure that the web pages are optimized to produce the best scalability and speed
- Utilize a diverse selection of coding or markup languages to design web pages
- Throughout the whole design, keep the brand consistency
Front End Developer: Skills Required
A front-end developer is a star of web or application development, so you need to be perfectly skilled and trained. The skills required for a front-end developer are:
- Acquire a degree in Computer Science, or any related field
- Proficiency in front-end frameworks such as HTML(HyperText Markup Language), CSS(Cascading Style Sheets), JavaScript, and jQuery
- Expertise in server-side CSS
- Experience with graphic design applications such as Adobe Illustrator
- Great skills in problem-solving
- Proficiency in communicating with team members, clients, and seniors
- Sound knowledge of principles of SEO
- Great interpersonal skills
How to Become a Front-end Developer?
Below are mentioned the steps to follow for becoming a front-end developer.
- Learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
These form the core of front-end development and are crucial to learning. And the best thing is that they are easy to learn. There are plenty of resources available that can make you master these technologies. Get familiar with jQuery and Javascript for an added advantage.
- Stay Updated
Stay always informed about the latest stuff in web design and development. This will make you understand how things work on a website, and you can better grasp these coding languages and their functioning.
- Practice until you get expert
‘Practice makes one perfect’ goes true for everything you do. Begin with building small parts of an application, or user interface, and expand your knowledge and experience gradually. Don’t worry if you make mistakes, as mistakes made you expert in developing web applications.
- Learn the Command Line
You should get the basic knowledge of concepts such as file system navigation and displaying files. Get a good grasp of Shell, which allows you to access operating system functions through a text interface.
- Learn Version Control System
A version control system allows you to keep track of the progress of your work and all the changes made to it. Even a small change made to the code can be tracked with a version control system. The most popular version control system is Git.
- Improve Your Skills with an online Bootcamp
There are many online resources that make you improve your skills and knowledge in front-end development. They provide the perfect training and make you acquire the required skills.
Become a Front-end Developer
Cut short, go with an online training course. An online training course makes you practice with small and then bigger user interfaces. You go hands-on with many projects and master the concepts of front-end development.
There are some specialties of an online training course, such as self-paced learning, round-the-clock teaching assistance, getting acquainted with real-life projects, and career guidance as well.
Enroll Now!!
