Below are some of the key technical and soft skills for front-end developers.
We’ll be covering:
- What Does a Front-end Developer Do?
- Key Skills Companies Look for in Front-end Developers
- Technical Skills
- Soft Skills
- FAQs on Front-end Developers in Malta
What Does a Front-end Developer Do?
Responsible for bringing design and technology together, a front-end developer works on presenting the backend operations in a way that makes it simple but aesthetic for users to interact with.
As a front-end developer, you’ll be taking the website design files and then converting them into HTML, JavaScript (JS), and/or CSS code. These three are the primary elements of front-end development and also include design, images, navigation, internal links, and so on.
Basically, a front-end developer has to be both – creative and tech-savvy. You can expect your day-to-day tasks to look something like this:
- Enhancing the user experience
- Turning ideas into reality using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Developing and maintaining the user interfaces of websites and web applications
- Building designs in a way that supports mobile marketing
- Incorporating the best SEO practices to help websites rank better
- Identifying and resolving bugs
Key Skills Companies Look for in Front-end Developers
Technical Skills
Here are the top technical skills companies in Malta look for in front-end developers:
- HTML/CSS
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language used for creating web pages. It is the most basic building block required for developing websites. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the language used for presenting the document you create with HTML.
HTML is used for creating the foundation for your page. Whereas, CSS is used to create the layout of the page, colour, fonts and style. Both of these languages are absolutely essential to become a front-end developer.
- JavaScript/jQuery
Another important tool for a front-end developer is JavaScript. If you are trying to implement interactive features in your website such as audio and video, games, scrolling abilities and page animations, JavaScript is the tool you need.
JavaScript consists of libraries like jQuery. It is a collection of plugins and extensions that make it faster and easier to use JavaScript on your website. jQuery takes common tasks that require multiple lines of JavaScript code and compresses them into a format that can be executed with a single line.
- Frameworks
Frontend frameworks are needed to facilitate the job of web developers: these software packages usually provide pre-written/reusable code modules, standardized front-end technologies and ready-made interface blocks making it faster and easier for developers to craft sustainable web applications and UIs without coding every function or object from scratch.
There are a bunch of front-end frameworks on the web, and most of them run on JavaScript as their source language. Developers are still fiercely arguing over which one is the best, so if you want to select a framework that is good for your needs, you have to consider some factors and tons of nuances. Below is a detailed comparison of the various front-end frameworks that are the most efficient and popular at the moment.
- ReactJs: This is now an open-source framework and one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks easy to learn and has a large developer community. React is used for developing single-page applications and comes in handy when you want to develop an interactive interface within a short period of time, since it’s very robust its components can be reused.
- VueJS: Ranking as one of the top frontend frameworks, Vue stands out as a straightforward framework easy to learn and use for building user interfaces and single-page applications. Developers can opt for Vue.js when building flexible design structures. Vue.js allows developers to design everything from scratch and it also comes in handy when developing giant projects as well.
- AngularJS: The Angular frontend framework is a strong open-source front-end development framework, it uses TypeScript/JavaScript for building mobile and desktop applications. Angular uses TypeScript as its primary language for development, making it the only framework in this list that is based on TypeScript. Angular is the best option for developing dynamic web apps and enterprise-based applications.
- EmberJS: Ember is an open-source JavaScript framework for building online applications, it is component-based and offers two-way data binding similar to Angular. Ember.js is one of the toughest to learn due to its rigid and conventional structure and despite being fresh and unknown, the development community is small. Ember.js is recommended for building large-scale modern applications with a better user interface. It provides complete technical facilitation due to its excellent routing.
- Responsive Design
We use different gadgets like computers, phones, and tablets to look at web pages. The web pages adjust themselves to the device you’re using without any extra effort from your end. This is due to the responsive design. One major role of a front-end developer is to understand the responsive design principles and how to implement them on the coding side.
It is an intrinsic part of CSS frameworks like Bootstrap. These skills are all interconnected and so as you learn one, you’ll often be making progress in the others at the same time.
- Version Control/Git
Version control is the process of tracking and controlling changes to your source code so that you don’t have to start from the beginning if anything goes wrong. It is a tool that you can use to track the changes made previously so that you can go back to a previous version of your work and find out what went wrong without tearing the whole thing down.
- Browser Developer Tools
To help developers test and adjust a webpage in the browser itself, most modern browsers have developer tools that let them also read and make changes to how the browsers interpret code.
While these tools may vary from browser to browser, an inspector and a JavaScript console are generally found in most of them. Therefore, you’ll need to have good knowledge of how these tools work so that you can check the accuracy of your code.
- Web Performance
It refers to the time a website takes to load. Nothing takes users away from a website more than one that takes a lot of time to load. So, all of those hours of coding and designing effort will go to waste if the loading time is too much.
That’s why a good front-end developer has ample knowledge of the best ways to optimize a page, decrease its loading time and therefore, enhance web performance. Some ways in which this can be done are – compressing images, and minifying CSS and JavaScript.
Soft Skills
When appearing for a front-end developer interview, it’s not just your technical skills that are put to the test but your soft skills too. Some of the top soft skills you’ll need to display are:
- Affinity for Design
Since a major part of the job includes improving and developing a website’s aesthetics, having an artistic eye will only help you in doing your job better. Furthermore, front-end developers are also expected to suggest visually-appealing features and functions to improve the user experience.
- Detail-Oriented
A lot goes behind the designing and development of a website. As a front-end developer, you won’t just be responsible for the bigger picture but also look after the hundreds of little details that go behind its creation. Being detail-oriented is, therefore, vital.
- Critical Thinking
Front-end developers need to be problem solvers since that skill is required to help resolve issues and come up with new ways to implement a feature. This is why several employers give critical thinking exercises to test the critical thinking abilities of candidates.
Therefore, if you’re a front-end developer looking to land a job in Malta, make sure that you carefully go over this list and prepare a strategy that helps you develop or polish these skills. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list but a good place to start. As you do your research, you can keep adding more and improving your chances of getting hired.
FAQs on Front-end Developers in Malta
Q1. What educational qualifications are required to become a Front-end Developer?
To become a front-end developer, you’ll generally a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field.
Q2. What are the skills required for Front-end Developers?
As a front-end developer, you’ll be required to have good knowledge of programming languages such as CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, familiarity with graphic design applications such as Adobe Illustrator, browser developer tools, and so on.
Top Front-end Developer Jobs
Have a look at the best Front-end Developer jobs in Malta.
For more information on current front-end developer salaries in Malta, feel free to download our latest IT Salary Survey.