What is frontend development?

The frontend concerns everything that a user can see on a web page. The frontend consists of three main technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

You can think of HTML as a Word document where you put all the text you want to show on a website. CSS is a style sheet language that describes how HTML elements (the content of your website) should be displayed on the screen (the look). CSS was created to complement HTML and basically takes care of the look, feel and ease of use of a website. JavaScript is a programming language that will make sure you can then interact with the content of the web page.

Frontend code runs in the browser. You can see it for yourself. On your laptop right click and press ‘Inspect’. In the ‘Elements’ tab, you will see the HTML code of the website, in the ‘Sources’ tab, you will be able to find the JavaScript code of the website. Fun fact: if you try this on the website of Booking.com, you will be able to see their message for frontend developers in the code on the top right corner.

The frontend concerns everything that a user can see on a web page. We also call it the ‘presentation layer’ or the ‘client-side’. Frontend code is code that is running in the window of the user, for example, the browser on your laptop or an application on your phone. This frontend code will change what the user can see.

This code will make sure that you can interact with the page. In the Booking.com example, you can select a place where you are going and put your check-in and check-out date. This is all done by using frontend code. Only the elements on your screen have changed.

However, if you actually want to search for a hotel in Amsterdam between the 20th of June and the 11th of July, the website will need to retrieve those data somewhere. The place where it retrieves that information is called the database. To retrieve that information, we need the backend.

So after you press ‘search’, the backend will retrieve the different hotels that are available between the 20th of June and the 11th of July in Amsterdam from the database. The frontend will then make sure that this is displayed properly on the screen of the user.

So frontend code can only change what the user can see. When the user needs to store or retrieve data from the database, they will need backend code.

If you want to know more about backend and the difference between frontend and backend, stick around with us.

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