Front-end Web Development — Roadmap Decoded!

8 min readAug 12, 2020

If you are obsessed with the websites and the way they function, you should try front-end web development. For those who have already chosen it, we have tried to break it down for a simpler understanding for you. Front-end web development may seem simpler at first. However, you need a concrete roadmap in order to implement and work towards a systematic flow in development.

If you are someone who prefers watching and learning instead of reading — here’s a link to my recently started Youtube Channel.

Before we get into it, please know that the roadmap and the list below is exhaustive and you don’t need to know it all from the beginning. For frontend development, all you need to get started with is learn some basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript and start working on projects; everything else you will learn along the way. If you want to quickly browse through I would recommend looking at our instagram post.

Without wasting time, let’s understand what web design and front-end web development are. Web design defines the look and feel of any website. Whereas, front-end web development refers to the process via which a design can be implemented on the web. The need for front-end developers is at peak these days. The concrete roadmap to understanding and excel is by following these simple steps:

Step 1: Understand how the Internet Works

Understand the importance of the internet and what role it plays in making a website or application smooth for the audience. We have listed some significant points to keep in mind:

DNS: It is a hierarchical system used when you want to search through multiple IP address networks and locate the IP of a website. Every time you use a domain name, the DNS service determines the website and translates the name into its corresponding IP address.
HTTP: The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used to load web pages using hypertext links. This application layer protocol is designed to transfer information between networked devices and runs on top of other layers of the network protocol stack.
Browsers: As a front-end developer, the browser is your primary tool for almost everything you’ll code. Understanding how browsers work will have a significant improvement in your project’s performance, usability and accessibility. Learning topics like rendering engines, construction of the render/DOM tree and painting will broaden your vision.
Hosting: Websites are hosted on servers. Users can type your website address or domain into their browser. Once that is done, your web pages get delivered via a browser by connecting through your server.
Domain name: It is nothing but your website name and address where Internet users can access your website. A domain name can be used in combination of the various extensions like .com, .net and more.

Step 2: The Basics

HTML & CSS: These are essentials to create a website. You can’t add images to a webpage without HTML! Master coding with HTML and CSS before you start front-end web development. Mastering these can be done in just a few weeks. You can learn more about HTML & CSS here. Concepts to focus here are: Basics, Forms and Validations, Making layouts, SEO basics, etc.
Javascript: It lets you add a ton more functionality to your websites. JS is used to control and create things like interactive films, maps that update in real-time and online games. Some sites use JavaScript heavily to make their user interface easy to use. Concepts to focus here are Syntax and basics, DOM Manipulation, Fetching API, Ajax, etc.

Step 3: Gear up to the Advanced Concepts

Advanced CSS: CSS is what gives webpages their style via layouts, colours, fonts, and so much more. Advanced CSS can help you create websites with a modern touch that are responsive. Regardless of the device size, advanced CSS can make a site look flawless without overlapping images or tiny text! Advanced CSS concepts include CSS Grid, Floats, Flexbox, Positioning, Media Queries, Animation, Transform, etc.
ES6: A good front-end web developer keeps up with the industry while understanding it’s past. ES6 gives Javascript developers a lot of useful functions and things that help them, so you can say that the majority of people will sort of “default” to using ES6 when writing their code or giving examples in tutorials. There are even later versions of ES out there now, so ES6 is recommended level, even further is always better!
ES2020: One major part of keeping your JavaScript skills sharp is staying current on the latest features in JavaScript. Learning the interesting features of ES2020 like BigInt, Nullish Coalescing, Dynamic Import, globalThis, Optional Chaining, Promise.allSettled and String#matchAll can help you improve your code by reducing verbosity.

Step 4: Version Control with Git

Version control systems help you keep a record of the changes that have been made to code. It becomes easy to revert to an earlier version if you have created an error with these systems. Git is one of them. Learning to use Git is a basic requirement for virtually any development job — even if it isn’t mentioned in the job description!

The most popular one is Github. Others are GitLab, BitBucket, GitTea, SourceForge, etc.

Step 5: Package Managers

Package managers are used to creating project environments and easily import external dependencies in a programming language. By specifying dependencies, a package name, author, tags/keywords and version number, online repositories can store your package and allow others to find your project. The liberty to create your own packages can challenge developers on critically thinking about their new package and its uses & implementation. This, in turn, helps front-end developers to produce better and reusable packages. Learn the types like NPM, Yarn and Deno to excel.

Step 6: Module Bundlers

Module bundlers are tools front-end developers use to bundle JavaScript modules into a single JavaScript file that can be executed in the browser. Webpack is one such module bundler used for JavaScript applications. You can package all the modules in your application into one or more bundles and serve it to the browser using Webpack. Moreover, you can transform, minify and optimize all types of files before serving with the help of loaders and plugins. Webpack helps you convert various assets like JavaScript, CSS, Fonts, Images and HTML into a convenient format to consume through a browser.

Step 7: Choose a JS Framework

JS frameworks including Angular, VueJS, Svelte and React give a ready-made structure to your JavaScript code. The above mentioned are the most popular in actual front-end web development job listings. These frameworks speed up development and can be used with libraries like jQuery to minimize how much from-scratch coding you have to do. Each framework has its pros and cons, so you can choose according to your requirements.

Step 8: Advanced Concepts of the selected Framework

Now it’s time to take your framework knowledge to the next level. Learn advanced concepts like Redux, Routing, State Management — React, VueX — VueJS and RxJS — Angular. If you want to try a relatively new approach to client-side development, then you may pay your attention to Vue or Svelte.

Step 9: CSS Framework

CSS and front end frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind and Materialize help you in amping upcoding. Much of CSS starts with the same elements from project to project. A framework that defines all of these can be valuable. Most front end developer job listings expect the applicants to be familiar with how these frameworks work and how to use them. These frameworks make your lives much easier as coders while making websites responsive.

Step 10: Testing

Every front-end web developer knows — bugs happen. Being familiar with testing processes is essential. Learn the difference between Unit, Functional and Integration Testing and learn how to write them. Unit testing helps in testing individual blocks of source code and unit testing frameworks provide a specific method and structure to do so.

UI testing helps you make sure that the website runs properly when users are taking actions on it. Use tools like Jasmine, Chai, Mocha and Ava for better results.

Step 11: Type Checkers

TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that has optional typing and compiles to plain JavaScript. With TypeScript, it is easier to refactor code without breaking it significantly. You can easily orient into complex and large-scale systems and avoid hidden errors as well.

Step 12: Mobile App Making

Mobile app making is in the trend and most front-end developers long to learn the art of the same. If you are working with a low budget and want a single code base, go for Progressive Web Applications or React Native and Flutter. You can also opt for Angular framework if your app has small or medium in complexity.

Optional but good to have

Learn static website generators such as Next.js, GatsbyJS, NuxtJS
GraphQL
Making desktop applications from websites using Electron
Web Components: HTML Templates, Custom Elements, Shadow DOM
CSS Architectures: BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS
CSS Preprocessors: Sass, PostCSS, Less
Linters and Formatters: Prettier, ESLint, StandardJS
Web Security Basics: HTTPS, CORS, Content Security Policy, OWASP Security Risks

Front-end web development is not an easy job, it requires a ton of practice, patience and learning to excel.

Although the best way to practice front-end development is through building real apps and websites yourself, it’s still great to have a go-to place to get tips, access tutorials and get support when you get stuck or need an opinion on something. There are sources like freeCodeCamp.org and Frontendmentor.io for beginners to practise front-end development.

If you are an aspiring front-end developer, visit our YouTube channel to understand and implement the basics of web development. Exert critical thinking and bring out-of-the-box ideas to work well with a client.

We hope this blog helped you understand the fundamentals of front-end development. Thank you! Wait for us to drop something much useful the next time.