Roadmap for Frontend Development

Are you finding it difficult to determine your next step in learning front-end development?

Get a step-by-step guide here.

Whether you’re a newcomer to the tech industry, advancing to mid-level, or aspiring to reach senior engineer status, there’s valuable content tailored to your journey available here!

Let’s explore this roadmap detailing essential skills for mastering front-end development!

Basics of the Internet

To begin with, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of the internet. While it may not involve coding directly, understanding these basics is crucial for newcomers to the tech industry, providing the necessary context and background for entering the realm of web development.

Here are a few recommended starting points for learning or researching:

Learn HTML

HTML often goes unrecognized despite being the backbone of front-end development. It serves as the foundational structure for all web content.

In the early days of web development, HTML lacked the robustness it has now. Many essential features for websites or web apps require extensive JavaScript implementation.

Today, confusion persists regarding the distinctions between elements like anchor tags, button tags, or simply using a div with a click handler.

Mastering semantic HTML thoroughly will not only benefit you in the long run but also enhance user experience significantly.

Were you aware that HTML is capable of:

• Creating dropdowns with searchable text
• Generating dialog boxes/modals
• Implementing progress meters
• Constructing accordions without the need for JavaScript
• Displaying the numeric keyboard on mobile devices for zip or phone fields

Additionally, we incorporate article, footer, header, nav, and more into our HTML structure. HTML offers a plethora of functionalities beyond simply nesting divs. Mastering semantic HTML enhances user accessibility, a topic we’ll delve into further in the accessibility section below.

Learn CSS Basics

CSS is an essential language for front-end developers striving for success. It’s not a skill you can simply pick up on the fly. Many backend and full stack engineers find CSS challenging, as it used to be more perplexing than it is today. However, dedicating time and effort to grasp it thoroughly is worthwhile.

For beginners, I recommend starting with selectors, classes, and the process of linking a stylesheet to an HTML file. These fundamentals lay a solid foundation for understanding CSS.

From there you can focus on:

• Text – colors, fonts, weights, styles
• The cascade – specificity and inheritance
• The box model – inline, block, margin, padding, borders
• Backgrounds and borders
• Sizing items
• Images, media, and forms
• All things tables
• Debugging
• Organizing your styles
• Layout – grids, flex, floats (don’t skip flex + grid, you’ll use them a lot)
• Positioning and z-index

Version Control

Many people tend to overlook this crucial step, but mastering the art of “version control” for your code can be a game-changer.

Git stands out as a widely used version control system among developers worldwide. It facilitates tracking various iterations of your code and fosters collaboration among team members.

When working on a project over time, maintaining a record of changes, their authors, and timestamps becomes essential.

Think of Git as a perpetual record of your codebase’s evolution, offering functionalities akin to endless undo/redo options and a comprehensive history log.

Popular repository hosting platforms (such as GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket) provide cloud storage solutions for your codebase.

Pro-tip: GitHub serves as a platform for storing your code alongside its Git history, enabling other developers to access and collaborate on it.

JavaScript (Your Journey Friend)

As of 2024, Wikipedia reports that 98.9% of websites utilize JavaScript for client-side webpage behavior, making it an indispensable skill for front-end engineers to acquire and excel in. JavaScript enables the incorporation of basic interactivity into websites and the development of comprehensive web applications.

For beginners, it’s advisable not to jump straight into learning React or jQuery solely because they are widely used. While these frameworks are prevalent, attempting to delve into them before grasping JavaScript fundamentals can lead to greater difficulties and confusion in the future.

Advanced ES6 Javascript

In 2015, JavaScript underwent a transformative evolution, resembling an entirely fresh language. It transitioned from relying on jQuery for intricate functionalities to establishing itself as a robust language with standalone capabilities.

Here are some of the key features that I rely on regularly for my work:

• Arrow functions
• Template literals
• Array methods like .map, .filter, .includes, .reduce, and more
• Object methods such as .keys, .values, .entries
• Object destructuring and spread
• Classes
• Promises along with async/await functionality

Pick a framework: React, Vue, Angular, Svelte

As a front-end developer, your role extends beyond merely constructing websites; you’ll be crafting web applications. Central to the architecture of contemporary web applications lies a robust framework.

As per the findings of the State of JS survey, React stands as the predominant framework presently. Developed by Meta, React boasts usage across more than 14 million sites and applications.

Following React in popularity are Vue and Angular, with Svelte making its presence felt as well.

If one were to gauge demand based solely on the volume of job postings, React leads the pack, trailed by Angular and Vue respectively.

To gain proficiency in any of these frameworks, it’s advisable to delve into a comprehensive book or enroll in an in-depth course. With frequent usage, there may come a point where you no longer perceive them as JavaScript-based tools; instead, you’ll instinctively think in terms of the particular framework, like “in React.”

Package Managers

As you develop a web application, you’ll likely leverage various libraries and top-notch packages crafted by others, such as React, Date-fns, Lodash, Axios, and more.

Traditionally, incorporating libraries into web projects involved embedding them using script tags. Yet, this approach becomes unwieldy as your project accumulates more dependencies, leading to potential management challenges.

A proficient package manager is tasked with:

• Locate all pertinent JavaScript package files accurately.
• Verifying them to ensure they are devoid of any recognized vulnerabilities.
• Fetching and organizing them in the appropriate directories within your project.
• Implementing the code necessary to integrate the package(s) into your application, often leveraging JavaScript modules—a topic worthy of further exploration and comprehension.
• Replicating this process for all sub-dependencies of the packages, which could number in the tens or hundreds.
• Purging all associated files should you opt to remove the packages.

Furthermore, package managers efficiently manage duplicate dependencies, a crucial aspect frequently encountered in front-end development.

Among the leading JavaScript package managers are npm, yarn, and pnpm.

Advanced State Management

When delving into any JavaScript framework, it’s advisable to acquaint yourself with State Management Libraries such as Redux, VueX, NgRX, and XState, among others, depending on the framework you opt to master. Each framework may have its preferred state management library. For instance, NgRX is tailored for Angular applications, being based on Redux.

Interactive web applications operate by responding to “events.” Whenever a specific event unfolds, the “state” of your application—comprising the data stored in variables—undergoes modification. These variables, governing the state of your interactive web application, necessitate a repository. This is where State Management steps in, responsible for the storage and upkeep of the application’s state.

Learn Testing

Although numerous companies maintain specialized Quality Assurance teams to conduct thorough testing of applications, developers are also accountable for conducting rudimentary testing of their applications to guarantee usability and functionality.

Drafting test cases for your code serves as a mechanism to verify that it operates as intended. This underscores the significance of possessing software testing skills as a front-end developer.

Front-end development encompasses various testing levels such as Unit Testing and End-to-End Testing. Various tools like Jest, Mocha, Jasmine, and Cypress are accessible for conducting tests.

Learn Tools for Website Deployment

After constructing your website, the next step is to deploy it for public access on the internet.

To deploy a website, familiarity with hosting tools is essential. Options include Github Pages, Heroku, Firebase, Netlify, Vercel, among others.

Additionally, hosting services are offered by major Cloud Providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.

Learn Advanced Topics

In the realm of front-end development, your work often involves creating websites that communicate with APIs and various services such as RESTful or SOAP. This necessitates familiarity with technologies like REST, SOAP, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) which are essential for client-server interaction.

An alternative to REST APIs is GraphQL, an open-source language for querying and manipulating data. GraphQL empowers developers to construct efficient and adaptable APIs. Its capability to fetch data from multiple sources in a single API call enhances speed and flexibility.

Understanding Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) is advantageous as they offer enhanced features such as installability, app-like interfaces, push notifications, caching, and background synchronization.

Additionally, Static Site Generators (SSGs) are worth exploring. SSGs are tools that generate HTML websites from templates and raw data. These sites have static content, allowing them to be pre-built and served quickly to users upon request, resulting in faster loading times. Popular SSGs include Jekyll, Gatsby, and Next.js.

Happy Coding!