Front-end development is everything that runs in the visitor’s browser: the layout, the styling and the behaviour. If someone could see it by pressing “view source”, it is front end.
What the job actually involves#
- Turning a design into a working page that behaves on every screen size
- Making the page respond to clicks, typing and scrolling
- Fetching data from an API and displaying it, including while it is loading and when it fails
- Making sure it works with a keyboard and a screen reader
- Keeping it fast enough on a mid-range phone on a poor connection
The last two are what separate competent front-end work from code that merely looks right on the developer’s laptop.
The skills, in order#
- HTML — semantic structure, forms, accessibility basics
- CSS — the box model, flexbox, grid, custom properties
- Responsive design — one page, every screen
- JavaScript — the longest stage, and the one worth taking slowly
- The DOM and events
- Fetching data — connecting to real APIs
- Git and deploying
- Then a framework
Where frameworks fit#
React, Vue and Svelte all solve the same problem: keeping the page in sync with your data as an app grows. You can feel that problem yourself by building the to-do app in plain JavaScript — the render-from-state pattern in that project is exactly what frameworks automate.
Learn one framework, not three. They share concepts, so the second is quick if you ever need it.
Things that matter more than people expect#
- Accessibility. Labelled form fields, keyboard navigation, sufficient colour contrast, alt text. Mostly small effort, large impact.
- Performance. Oversized images are the usual culprit. Check the Network tab.
- Loading and error states. Every fetch has three outcomes. Handling only the happy one is what makes apps feel broken.
- Reading DevTools. See browser DevTools for beginners.
Projects that prove the skill#
- A responsive portfolio page
- A to-do app with saved data
- A quiz app with scoring
- Something that fetches from a public API and handles loading and errors properly