Top 5 Skills to get a Frontend Developer job.
Starting with the Big Three of higher wages, innovative work, and a flexible schedule, there is a relatively large list of reasons why tech is an enticing area to work in.
Who is a Front End Developer?
Front end developers make websites using the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript building blocks (more about this soon).
They ‘re the ones that take a design and turn it into a workable website.
Here’s a digestible list (and description!) of 5 important skills each Front end developer requires:
5 Must-Have Front End Developer Skills
1. HTML/CSS
Let’s just take a step back to see what HTML to CSS are.
The basic markup language used to build web pages is the HyperText Markup Language (HTML).
A markup language is your way of making notes which can be separated from standard text in a digital document. It is the most basic building block you’ll need for website making.
Learn more at https://www.w3schools.com/html/
CSS ( Cascading Style Sheets) is the language used by HTML to show the document you are making.
Where HTML comes first and provides the foundation for the website, CSS comes next and is used to create the layout, color, fonts, and … well, the theme of the web!
To put it simply: no HTML/CSS, no web creation.
Learn more https://www.w3schools.com/css/
2. JAVASCRIPT/JQUERY
JavaScript (JS) will be another Big tool in the front end developer toolbox.
Where HTML is a markup language, and where CSS is a style sheet language, JS is the first language I have listed that is a bonafide language of programming.
What is the difference?
Where the appearance of a page is defined by HTML and CSS, JS defines the feature.
In some cases a very simple website or web page is great, but for circumstances where you need interactive features — audio and video, games, scrolling functionality, page animations, and most importantly for web apps — JS is the tool you’ll use to enforce them (although as CSS grows, it’s starting to handle some of these duties as well).
One cool thing to keep in mind about JS is the existence of libraries such as jQuery, a collection of plugins and extensions that make the use of JS on your website faster and easier.
JQuery takes common tasks involving multiple lines of JS code and compresses them into a single line format.
When you’re coding with JS this will be a huge help.
Learn more at https://www.w3schools.com/js/ and https://www.w3schools.com/jquery/
3. BROWSER DEVELOPER TOOLS
Ultimately, the users will interface with your websites via a web browser.
Through these browsers, the way your site is rendered will be a big part of whether or not your work is successful.
As with the above-mentioned testing and debugging, all modern web browsers come equipped with developer tools.
These tools allow you to check and fine-tune your web pages in ways that are unique to how your code is interpreted by the web. Specifics will vary from browser to browser, but generally, browser developer tools consist of a JavaScript console and an inspector. The inspector lets you see what the HTML runtime looks like on your website, what CSS is associated with each feature on the website, and also allows you to edit the HTML and CSS, and see the changes live as they occur.
The JS console helps you to view any errors that occur when the application attempts to execute your JS code.
Learn more at https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools
4. VERSION CONTROL/GIT
You’ll have gone through a number of revisions in your development after all your hard work marking up with HTML, styling with CSS and programming with JS.
If something goes wrong along the way the last thing you’re going to want to do is to start over from the start.
Version control is the mechanism by which modifications to the source code are monitored and managed so that this does not happen.
Version management software — like open source stalwart Git — is a tool you’ll be using to track those changes so you can go back to a previous version of your work and figure out what went wrong without breaking down the whole thing.
As you might expect, this would be a capability you (and your prospective clients and employers) are very pleased to have.
Learn more at https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-About-Version-Control
5. CSS AND JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORKS
CSS and JavaScript frameworks are collections of CSS or JS files that provide you with common functionality (think logging into a website or searching a blog) to do a bunch of work.
Instead of starting with an EMPTY code file, you start with a code file that already contains lots of awesome JS/CSS.
Frameworks have strengths and disadvantages— not all of us! And choosing the best Framework for the type of website you are creating is critical.
For instance, some JS frameworks are great for building complex user interfaces, while others excel in displaying all the content of your site.
You can use frameworks together to make things even MORE enjoyable.
Bootstrap is usually combined with another JavaScript application, namely AngularJS.
Angular handles the content and interactions, and Bootstrap handles the look & feel.
Since you will be using CSS and JS in your web development all the time, and because many projects start with similar style elements and code, knowledge of these frameworks is crucial to being an efficient developer.
Learn more at https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/ , https://www.w3schools.com/angular/ and https://www.w3schools.com/react/
I hope you will enjoy learning these skills and land a job as a Front end developer shortly.
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Cheers,
Ritesh
