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General Discussion

Posted by Mamba Wilbury
Mamba Wilbury
2,409 Points

Front End Knowledge

So I'm very interested in continuing my studies in Front End Development. I enjoy HTML, CSS and everything that goes into the visual construction of websites. As I'm still building a foundation in these two languages, I look forward to JavaScript next. My question is this:

  • I've noticed that many designers on Dribble and CodePen make some very impressive things primarily using CSS. As unique and truly elaborate as they are I have no personal interest in learning those skills. Is this a worry from a Front End perspective? I love layout, site design and believe I'll like JavaScript functionality as well but I suppose I'm worried I'll be expected to learn how to make ice cream cones in CSS should I eventually succeed as a Front End Developer. As I said, I'm more interested in the structural layout and functionality. Is this more of a "graphic designer" I'm describing or the future of Front End?? Any advice is appreciated....

2 Answers

Alessandro Muraro
Alessandro Muraro
15,457 Points
Alessandro Muraro
Alessandro Muraro
15,457 Points

Hi, no I don't think you need to code ice cream cones :) of all the people I know, nobody spends time doing that. This said, if you DO code an ice cream cone, you would end up learning a lot.

What I think happens is that you get a job, where you need to design something, and you are like "hey this might be an ice cream cone" and you do it in codepen or dribble, or as a jquery plugin, or a wordpress plugin, or whatever. Otherwise, you need a good deal of spare time and/or no social life.

That's the way I see it at least :)

Mamba Wilbury
Mamba Wilbury
2,409 Points

Thank you Alessandro, greatly appreciated!

Maciej Sitko
Maciej Sitko
16,164 Points
Maciej Sitko
Maciej Sitko
16,164 Points

Well, generally speaking, Front End Developer doesn't have to touch anything related to Graphic Design software, his essential skills are:

  • HTML/CSS with some frameworks, like Twitter Bootstrap.
  • JavaScript (good knowledge of), especially jQuery library and AJAX, JSON.
  • PHP, MYSQL knowledge, and a framework, like Laravel or CakePHP.
  • Sass or Less preprocessor usage.
  • Git version control knowledge for team projects (mandatory).
  • CMS fluency.

I would say the thing that interests you really is a Creative Designer, which is:

  • HTML/CSS
  • jQuery knowledge.
  • Branding/UI/UX knowledge
  • Software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop.
  • Typography knowledge (excellent).
  • Some grasp of CSS preprocessors, again Sass or Less.

So, i see it like this. There's been a great Front-End devs debate over the years from which Creative Designers start to emerge. The reason for this is simple, its like a Star Wars balance between a Jedi Knight, a Jedi Sentinel and a Jedi Master. Creative Designer is between the Front Ender and a typical graphic Web Designer. Simply put, as a Front End developer, you've got so many things to do codewise, that you don't have ANY time for fiddling with vectors and bitmaps in Adobe software. That borders goes even wider than that and its harder and harder to meet all of these things together, as it comes to the expanding world of today. So, as a result, the more specialisations arise between these three branches of Website Visual Design (here, I omit the back enders who are not to be classified as visual designers, or designers at all). Those include UX specialists, et cetera, et cetera...

Hope I helped. Stay Creative :)

Mamba Wilbury
Mamba Wilbury
2,409 Points

Thank you very much Maciej, I greatly appreciate your input and advice.