In complete web development, we mostly depend on two types of developers. One is known as a front-end developer, who is responsible for all the front-end stuff of a website. Other is a Back-end developer who is responsible for all the back-end services. However, it also depends on the complexity of a website then we have some other engineers as well. Like: a Database engineer, Quality Assurance engineers, Project managers and so on.
Who is Front-end Developer?
When you visit any website, an entire layout with animations, transitions and all the hover effects you experience on the web. Each and everything you see, click or touch is an expertise of front-end developer. They actually implements the design on the web. They uses a lot of his creativity to give the user a pleasant look and attracts user on the web.
Why Front-End Developer?
A long time ago when front-end developers are considered to be a non-technical developers. They mostly works with few primary languages like: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap and JavaScript for developing the layouts.
With a passage of time, and continuous advancement in web technology. The trend has totally changed. The demand for front-end developers has increased. They are now playing a key role in overall development process. Industries are actively looking for pragmatically and technically strong front-end developers.
Front-end developers need to be smarter than ever before. They need to update them from the latest trends and technologies. As we know Bootstrap is a world most popular HTML/CSS framework. Bootstrap has just launched their latest version 5 couple of months ago.
Nowadays, even writing a simple CSS code needs the understanding of programming languages. This is important to understand to deal with SASS and LESS. The developer should learn the new approaches, that how the modern web pages are rendered.
What Front-End Developer Do?
The main work of Front-end developer starts with the UI development. This work usually evolve around HTML/CSS and little bit scripting. This simple HTML/CSS is also an art too. Many people does that but few do it with great understanding and future proof. If the backbone and base structure has deployed correctly, then all the things will work great.
Beside UI development. Front-end developer should have a very good understanding of some JavaScript libraries. This will help them to develop faster, reliable and secure applications. There is a list of some major task for which a front-end developer is responsible for:
Angular/ReactJS/VueJS:
Front end developer should have a good understanding of Angular, ReactJS and VueJS. These all are some modern JavaScript frameworks and libraries used for front-end development. These are super fast for rendering a web page. They have component based rendering, in which only a component has to render instead of a full HTML web page.
API Integration
Getting an API’s from back end developers and integrate them into the application. It is used for making the application functional and operational.
SASS and LESS
SASS and LESS both are CSS pre-processor. It is just another way of writing CSS, but in a modern style with variables, functions, loops etc.
Form Validation
Form validation is another responsibility. A good form validation avoids the risk of getting unnecessary data into the database through forms.
Website Optimization
According to several surveys and reports, user will no longer stay on your site, if your website takes longer time to load. A good site should load within 3 seconds. Web optimization has its key role for best user experience. Heavy images, uncompressed style sheets and scripts will slow down your website and lost user interaction.
Across the browser compatibility
If you think you have developed an outstanding website from best of your knowledge, but you are unaware that your website might not work well with other popular browsers. It has a very bad on impact on the visitor and bouncing rate will go down.
Search Engine Optimization
No matter how attractive website you have developed. How many effects and animations you have used. If your website is not fully SEO optimized. Then search engines will fail to index and it won’t appear on search engines. Nowadays, almost all the website is searched through search engines. Like: Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.
Conclusion
We have discussed in detail and about the role and responsibilities of a Front-end developer. How they work, what technologies they learn. How a front-end person has a very key role in overall development process. No matter what complexities a back-end developer has faced in all the development process. If your front-end has not developed with best user interface and user experiences. If entire theme has failed to get user interaction. Then all the hard work of Back-end developer is of no use.
