Front-end development primarily focuses on user experience. Using the related coding and design techniques, you as front-end developers build the elements of an application that are directly accessed by end-users with a goal of rendering the entire interface elegant, easy to use, fast, and secure, fostering user engagement and interaction.
As part of creating an engaging user interface, front end app development often focus on specific design elements such as text colors and styles, images, graphs and tables, buttons, and overall color schemes. These elements play a crucial role in enhancing the visual appeal and user-friendliness of the application.
Front end app development encompasses various interactive elements like sliders, pop-up forms, and custom interactive maps. An essential part of a front end application are navigational menus, which guide users through the application, enhancing their overall experience and interaction with the website or application. The creation of intuitive and user-friendly navigational menus is a key skill for front-end developers.
Front-end developers require a specific set of skills to effectively create user interfaces. This includes proficiency in coding languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as a strong understanding of CSS preprocessors such as Sass and Less. In terms of career requirements, aspiring front-end developers often pursue a degree in Computer Science or a related field, although this is not always a mandatory requirement. A strong foundational understanding and proficiency in coding languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and increasingly, jQuery, are essential.
Additionally, an understanding of server-side CSS processing techniques and their applications in web development is beneficial. In terms of CSS, front-end developers must also be adept at styling text, including choosing appropriate colors and styles to ensure readability and enhance user engagement. They should also be skilled in TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript, which adds static typing abilities to the language.
Thanks to the latest design and technology trends geared for the front end, you can build increasingly more sophisticated designs and interaction patterns. Simultaneously, however, more complexity results, so much so that front-end web development has become a specialized field that requires deep expertise.
Front end applications, also known as the “client side” of an application, are what users see and interact with. They differ from the backend, which is like the hidden machinery behind the scenes. In this context, APIs act as translators, ensuring seamless communication between the visually rich front-end and the complex backend.
The major trend in front-end development in recent years is the growth of applications for mobile and smart devices, with users accessing applications from a growing number of devices with different screen sizes and interaction options. As a result, front-end developers must ensure their application delivers a consistent, high-quality user experience for all devices and usage scenarios. That’s a daunting challenge.
This article covers the following topics:
Hardware, computer programs, and websites comprise many components: code, databases, user interfaces (UI). Those that interact with users are in the front end; those that operate the technology are situated in the back end, also called the data-access layer. The back end provides the resources to support the front end.
While front-end development is focused on what happens in the user interface, back-end development deals with what goes on behind the scenes. It is often perceived that front-end development is technically easier compared to the complexities of back-end development, which requires a solid command over programming languages, Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA), and data management skills.
Here are the key differences between software development in the front end and back end:
An emerging concept in front-end development is the use of micro-frontends. This approach involves breaking down front-end app development into smaller, more manageable pieces for better scalability and maintainability. Moreover, front-end developers also need to be adept with tools for testing and code analysis to ensure the quality and performance of the application.
As part of career development, aspiring front-end developers should focus on building an online portfolio to showcase their skills and projects. Additionally, cultivating soft skills like communication and teamwork is as important as technical proficiency.
Below are the most common programming languages for developing the front end.
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) programming language, which defines the structure and meaning of web content, is a building block for front-end web development. Through HTML, browsers display text or load elements, rendering webpages, which contain hyperlinks and links to other webpages, for users.
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When building websites, images are one of the assets that takes a lot of storage space, leading to increased hosting costs. If you want to save money, use Cloudinary that allows you to upload your images and deliver them with on-the-fly transformations to adjust size, format, and more.
Cascading style sheets (CSS) is the standard language that specifies how to display HTML content: fonts, foreground and background colors, etc. With CSS, you can control the design layout and its components for various devices like desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Examples of the components are the header, body, footer, content, asides, and sections.
JavaScript (JS) extends the functionality of websites beyond HTML and CSS. Through JS:
In the United States, front-end developers earn an average annual salary of $90,345, as reported by Glassdoor. This total comprises a base salary of $83,119 and additional compensation of $7,226, which can stem from various sources such as profit-sharing, commissions, or bonuses. Factors such as educational background, work experience, and professional certifications can influence the overall salary range for front-end developers.
Front-end frameworks accord you ready-made code and components, such as prewritten standard functions packaged as libraries, with no need to build common functionality and components from scratch.
These tools often include drag-and-drop elements, enabling developers to build attractive layouts and applications with various built-in features efficiently.
With Angular, a popular, open-source JavaScript framework initially created by Google, you can deliver highly dynamic results through the HTML syntax. Angular adopts an efficient modular approach and follows the MVC architecture, which divides the website structure into three parts: model, view, and controller (MVC). In particular, Angular facilitates cleaner code through TypeScript and leverages the dependency-injection design pattern.
Introduced in 2011 by Meta and now supported by a large community, React is an open-source, declarative JavaScript framework whose component-based approach enables code reuse. React facilitates more efficient updates of views with the virtual Document Object Model (VDOM), a lightweight JavaScript representation of the DOM, enhancing performance. You can use React to develop single-page applications (SPAs).
Widely used and supported by many user-created plugins, jQuery is an open-source JavaScript library that simplifies the development of web applications. For example, jQuery edits CSS properties by incorporating JavaScript functionalities and applies effects, such as fade-in and fade-out, to website elements. With jQuery, you can also simplify the processes of implementing HTML DOM changes, event handling, and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax).
Written in JavaScript, Vue.js is a core library that focuses on the view layer only, enabling the development of distinct web interfaces and single-page applications. You can integrate this library with other tools and libraries for the desired output.
A popular, open-source framework for developing responsive and mobile-first websites, Bootstrap offers CSS-based and JavaScript-based templates that include components like navigation bars, progress bars, thumbnails, and dropdowns, all of which you can incorporate into webpages.
Bootstrap implements responsive images through built-in code that automatically resizes them according to the current screen size. Also, with the JQuery plugins in Bootstrap, you can build and deliver interactive solutions for modal popups, image carousels, and transitions.
A well-documented development framework for creating responsive layouts with HTML, Semantic UI relies on the semantic language to facilitate development and offers components for various features. You can integrate Semantic UI with many third-party applications and tools.
Svelte is a compiler that converts declarative components into highly optimized vanilla JavaScript that surgically updates the DOM during the build phase of the development process. That’s a different approach from that in frameworks like Vue and React, which work in users’ browsers while the applications are running.
Preact offers a thin VDOM abstraction, registers real event handlers, builds on stable platform features, and integrates with other libraries. You can use Preact directly in browsers without transpilations.
Preact is so light that developer code is the largest part of the application. As a result, there’s less JavaScript to download, parse, and execute, freeing you up for other tasks.
Ember.js is an open-source JavaScript framework for developing large client-side web applications with structured and organized code according to the MVC model. This framework uses route as a model and a handlebar template for views, as well as employs controllers to edit the data in the model.
Here’s a frequently asked question: “What Is responsive web development?” RWD, also known as responsive design, is a web-design approach that emphasizes user experience. The objective is to ensure consistent rendering of webpages on various devices, screens and windows of different shapes and sizes, etc. Such an approach has become important given the rise of mobile devices, with most web traffic coming from mobile-device users. Real-world implementations of RWD abound, which most users, who focus on only the convenience and appeal of websites, rarely notice.
Following are several techniques with which to make websites responsive to various conditions:
For more details, see:
The importance of front-end development goes beyond merely aesthetics and user experience. It holds substantial potential to impact a business’s profitability in multiple ways. Here are some key benefits of investing in quality front-end development.
Front-end development plays a pivotal role in enhancing user experience. Websites that are well-crafted, functional, and visually appealing on any device tend to attract and retain more visitors. Easy navigation and intuitive interaction encourage users to explore your content, ultimately increasing the chance of conversion into customers.
For instance, websites with poor front-end design may cause difficulties for mobile users, potentially leading to a high bounce rate. However, high-quality front-end development ensures that the website adjusts itself to fit the device’s screen, providing a comfortable and intuitive user experience. This enhanced user experience can lead to increased engagement and satisfaction, which directly impacts your business’s success.
For more details, see the detailed guide to Customer Journey Management
Historically, companies often needed to maintain different versions of their websites for desktop and mobile users, which doubled both development and maintenance efforts. However, with modern front-end development techniques, you can create websites that work seamlessly across all devices. This not only reduces upfront development cost but also simplifies maintenance as updates only need to be applied once.
Quality front-end development can also lead to higher conversion rates. With an improved user experience, visitors are likely to spend more time on your site, which raises the possibility of them making a purchase or signing up for a service.
Moreover, a well-developed front-end can improve your website’s search engine rankings. For instance, Google has indicated that it prefers websites using robust web development practices because it facilitates better analysis and indexing of content. Better search engine rankings enhance visibility, which can result in increased site traffic and higher conversion rates.
In our fast-paced digital era, speed is paramount. Users expect web pages to load quickly, and slow loading times can lead to higher bounce rates. Quality front-end development can optimize your website’s performance, ensuring fast loading times across all devices. Faster loading speeds not only improve user experience but can also favorably influence your search engine ranking, as loading speed is a critical factor in search engine algorithms.
Investing in quality front-end development also supports a product-led growth strategy. A well-developed website can deliver a consistent and high-quality user experience across all devices, showcasing your products or services effectively, irrespective of the device your potential customers use.
In a product-led growth strategy, the product is the main driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. Therefore, a website with a high-quality front-end that offers a seamless user experience significantly contributes to the success of this strategy.
Web applications are divided into six types.
Based on HTML and CSS, static web applications contain no dynamic elements and are primarily for displaying content and data only, allowing no interactions between users and servers. Hence, these applications, the common ones being portfolio sites and official company sites, are relatively easy and simple to build, modify, and manage. Note that despite being static, these applications can include videos, GIFs, and animated banners.
Dynamic web applications offer interactions between the server and user, i.e., the user makes a request, which the server accepts and then generates content in real time. These applications, which often hold databases or forums and which constantly update or modify the content, usually perform updates through a content management system (CMS). You can build these applications with various web languages, but PHP and ASP are the best for structuring content.
E-commerce web applications, which are online stores that promote and sell products or services, typically offer a rich set of features that facilitate purchase transactions. As a rule, these are interactive applications through which users can interact with the server and which you can integrate with other systems to better manage interactions and inventory.
Single-page applications (SPAs) display updated content by loading a single document with a JavaScript API, e.g., XMLHttpRequest and Fetch. Consequently, since users need not load new webpages from the server, higher performance and a dynamic user experience follow. However, because SPAs are more complex than other web applications, more effort is required to monitor the performance, maintain the state, and implement navigation capabilities.
Progressive web applications (PWAs), which are websites that function as mobile applications through mobile-native features, require no software purchases or downloads from app stores by users. To locate and access PWAs on their browser, users can start with a search-engine query.
With PWAs, you can develop mobile-native applications for mobile operating systems. As with YouTube videos, devices progressively download PWA content, delivering a more smooth user experience than that from traditional websites through responsive design.
Ultimately, PWAs offer mobile browsers many benefits of native applications with a goal of blurring the distinction between mobile-web and mobile-native applications.
Given that the software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model enables hosting of applications, independent software vendors (ISVs) can contract with a cloud provider for that service. Cloud providers can also serve as ISVs.
SaaS applications typically adopt a multitenant approach, running a single application instance on host servers. That instance serves each cloud tenant or customer while the application runs on a single version and configuration slated for all tenants or customers. Thus, multiple customers run on the same cloud instance through a common infrastructure and platform even though their data remains segregated.
As a result of that setup, cloud providers can apply changes for all customers through a single, shared instance, more efficiently performing maintenance tasks, fixing bugs, and delivering updates .
Given the importance of content in the digital economy, many web and mobile applications, such as those in the media and news sector, provide content as an integral part of their functionality. Content is also essential in social media and applications geared for messaging, task management, and sharing of text, imagery, or video among users.
While developing web applications, you must do the following vis-à-vis content:
Contributed at no charge by users and not generated or purchased by application owners, UGC can make applications much more attractive to users. That’s because it’s authentic and created by fellow site visitors or even by social connections.
Before adding UGC to an application, carefully consider these aspects:
For more details, see the following pages on Cloudinary:
Images and videos have become ubiquitous in both web and mobile applications. When correctly leveraged, visual content enhances user experience and is readily consumed by users.
Before adding to your application a large number of images and videos, which necessitate ongoing management and maintenance, think about how to meet the following requirements:
For more details, see the following:
In addition, this Cloudinary page describes how the Cloudinary Media API can help you manage, optimize, and deliver rich media.
Many organizations create applications to meet marketing goals. For example, a clothing chain would share with its users an application on which to browse new product offers, make purchases, and join loyalty programs.
Here are the key factors to consider vis-à-vis development of applications with marketing content:
Performance, a critical consideration in application design, is becoming increasingly important as a means of winning user satisfaction. Following are best practices for improving application performance.
Load time is the amount of time it takes for websites to render the related files and download them to a user’s computer. For mobile applications, load time is how long they take to initially load or display new screens or interface elements.
Load time can be affected by latency, file size, and the number of files. Keeping files as small as possible and reducing the number of HTTP requests are common techniques for shortening load times.
Besides loading fast, applications must also be stable and easy to use. That is, they must scroll smoothly; their buttons must respond correctly to clicks; and their dynamic elements must move smoothly and react immediately to user actions.
Improve smoothness by minimizing UI updates during user interactions with your application. For example, using CSS animations instead of JavaScript can minimize UI redraws due to DOM changes. Frameworks like React Native enhance interactivity by dynamically reloading a page to display the various parts of the interface instead of having to reload the page.
Even though a key measurement of user experience is an objective analysis of site speed, studies show that awareness of website speed counts more than objective statistics. Perceptions of performance are subjective and difficult to assess, however. As a solution, for operations that take a long time, display to the user a useful hint or an entertaining joke during the operation, or a clear message that points out how long the operation will take. The user can then choose to turn to other tasks or stay engaged.
A smart UX strategy often translates to more satisfied users and lower abandonment of websites or mobile apps—even if certain operations or pages take a while to complete or load.
Be sure to measure and continually monitor the actual and perceived speed of your application. That is, optimize your application and monitor its performance on an ongoing basis. Adopting metrics that depict success or failure and the tools to measure them helps optimize performance.
Here are the back-end metrics that offer clues on application-performance issues:
Additionally, these end-to-end metrics help quantify the actual user experience:
Be sure to check out application performance management (APM) solutions that offer more complex end-to-end performance measurements and use synthetic requests to simulate the user experience.
Oftentimes, images and videos take up most of the data on websites or web applications. Since most users in many industries access applications on mobile phones, file size and performance are important considerations. Even on fast connections, every second in page load counts. Therefore, optimizing images and videos to reduce page weight, load times, and network resource loads is a must-do.
You can optimize images in these three ways:
Here are a few ways in which to optimize videos:
For more details, see the following:
Lazy loading means delaying the loading of a resource or object, e.g., displaying a placeholder of an image not yet in the user’s viewport and loading the image when the user scrolls down and reaches it. That way, you not only shorten the initial load time, but also conserve bandwidth and system resources on both the client and the server.
To recap, lazy loading offers three benefits:
Consider the steps below to secure the front end.
Web applications served over regular HTTP are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle (MitM) and downgrade attacks. In contrast, HTTPS offers greater security by means of encryption, preventing hackers from snooping data.
Here’s what takes place behind the scenes:
Accordingly, ensure that browsers can serve your application over HTTPS only.
Note: HTTPS requires valid TLS certificates for encryption. The private key must be adequately secure on the server.
Content Security Policy (CSP), a browser standard that detects and mitigates several types of code-injection attacks, ranging from clickjacking to XSS, is the key to securing front-end applications. By limiting the source domains from which the browser loads external resources, CSP prevents it from executing malicious inline code.
To enable CSP, set the content-security-policy header to a set of directives, delimited by semicolons.
Content delivery network (CDNs), a transparent mechanism for delivering web content, shorten physical distances, accelerate rendering, and improve site performance through virtualization by means of reverse proxy technology. CDNs reside in front of back-end servers.
Given their location at the edge of the network perimeter, CDNs act as a virtual security fence by blocking distributed denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, which must be addressed before they reach the core network infrastructure.
Since rich media determines whether your site or application’s user experience is engaging, be sure to automate the process of managing media assets and creating multiple versions for delivery. Don’t let those tasks be a burden on developers and creative professionals.
Cloudinary offers an intuitive user interface, replete with APIs and widgets, with which you can store, transform, optimize, and deliver images, videos, and other rich media. Below are the key capabilities.
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Below are additional articles that can help you learn about front-end development topics.
In my experience, here are tips that can help you better master front-end development:
These tips will help you refine your front-end development skills, ensuring that your applications are not only visually appealing but also performant, secure, and maintainable.
