Louis Lazarus over at impressivewebs.com recently wote an interesting article on the skills which front end developers should have. It was an interesting post though I felt it turned into a bit of a framework/buzzword list, so I thought I would put together my own thoughts on the matter. The main difference I think is that I’ve tried to categorise the skills somewhat and to give some more focus for a budding front end dev to review.
Technical
- HTML, XHTML and HTML 5
- CSS2 and CSS 3
- JavaScript
- One of jQuery/MooTools/Scriptaculous or similar
- Ajax
- In browser debugging/tweaking
Conceptual
- Basics of OOP
- MVC
- Performance considerations on the front end
- Differing approaches to CSS
- Grid systems and CSS frameworks
- UX and usability
- Design
- Markup semantics
Useful side skills
- Server side language/framework
- CMS knowledge (WordPress, Drupal or Joomla perhaps)
- Basics of SEO
- Version control
- Accessibility considerations
- JSON
- User testing
I’m sure it’s not an exhaustive list but I think it may be more useful for someone looking to become a front end developer, than the original shopping list of skills.
That’s all my opinion though – be interested to hear from others on this!