What skills does a front end developer need?

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1

I’m getting tired of ppc SEO and all that other jazz and begin to wonder If my career prospects would be better if I learnt to be a front end developer.

So my question is please… do i need to get mastery over the following languages to be able to wear the badge of competent front end developer :

HTML / CSS / jQuery / PHP / MySQL …

Any insights welcome :slight_smile:

2

XHTML CSS Photoshop, Photoshop, Photoshop …let the back end developer worry about php java and mysql

3

And… Usability, Accessibility, some graphic design skills, photoshop (or similar), a text editor like Dreamweaver.

There’s a Sitepoint Web site Business kit, why not have a look at it.

http://www.sitepoint.com/kits/freelance2/

4

Thank you for your reply :slight_smile: Regarding photoshop skills Ive got the site point book photoshop anthology is this the sort of stuff I need to master?
Would be very gratefull if you could spell out specific skills I’d need crack on photo shop :slight_smile:

5

Concerning scripting/markup languages, you’ll need HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
You should also know the very basics of a programming language, so that when confronted with code you won’t suffer cardiac arrest.

Other equally important things to be good at (in no particular order):

  • Graphic design, shapes, colour theories, balance, grids, etc.
  • Drawing/Sketching
  • Typography
  • Branding
  • Basic SEO/SEM
  • Basics on Business Fundamentals
  • Knowing the browser landscape inside out (bugs, general differences in rendering between versions and platforms)
  • Accessibility - problems, workarounds
  • DOM
  • Ethic responsibilities as a designer
  • Understanding of usability
  • Good communication skills

I can’t think of more right now but that’s quite a lot already.

6

Essentially, the languages you need are:

  • (x)HTML (HTML and / or XHTML, depending on the websites needs)
  • XML (People often forget this, but Sitemaps, Feeds, and other stuff needs it)
  • CSS (Of course… 2.1 is good, 3.0 Draft version is also useful)
  • JavaScript (Yes you need to know JavaScript even if you use jQuery)

The theoretical knowledge you’ll need are:

  • Accessibility (Making stuff work for the disabled)
  • Usability (Making stuff run smoothly for the end-user)
  • User-Experience Design (Conventions and patterns)
  • Information Architecture (How stuff should be organized)
  • Graphic Design (Useful for producing images and media)
  • Business basics (Using contracts, running a business, etc)
  • Marketing (Social networks, SEO, general advertising)

… depends on what level you want to go too, but those are the main “areas” :slight_smile:

PS: Photoshop is NOT a requirement (though it’s useful) and PHP / mySQL are generally for the backend developer.