Front end development
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Front-end web development is the development of the graphical user interface of a website, through the use of HTML,
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
, and JavaScript, so that users can view and interact with that website.


Tools used for front-end development

There are several tools and platforms, such as WordPress, Joomla, and
Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...
, available that can be used to develop the front end of a website.


HyperText Markup Language

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the backbone of any website development process, without which a web page does not exist. Hypertext means that text has links, termed hyperlinks, embedded in it. When a user clicks on a word or a phrase that has a hyperlink, it will bring another web-page. A markup language indicates text can be turned into images, tables, links, and other representations. It is the HTML code that provides an overall framework of how the site will look. HTML was developed by
Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...
. The latest version of HTML is called HTML5 and was published on October 28, 2014 by the
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
recommendation. This version contains new and efficient ways of handling elements such as video and audio files.


Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
(CSS) controls the presentation aspect of the site and allows your site to have its own unique look. It does this by maintaining style sheets that sit on top of other style rules and are triggered based on other inputs, such as device screen size and resolution. The CSS can be added externally, internally, or embedded in the HTML tags.


JavaScript

JavaScript is an event-based imperative programming language (as opposed to HTML's
declarative language In computer science, declarative programming is a programming paradigm—a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs—that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. Many languages that a ...
model) that is used to transform a static HTML page into a dynamic interface. JavaScript code can use the Document Object Model (DOM), provided by the HTML standard, to manipulate a web page in response to events, like user input. Using a technique called AJAX, JavaScript code can also actively retrieve content from the web (independent of the original HTML page retrieval), and also react to server-side events as well, adding a truly dynamic nature to the web page experience.


WebAssembly

WebAssembly WebAssembly (sometimes abbreviated Wasm) defines a portable binary-code format and a corresponding text format for executable programs as well as software interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment ...
, supported by all the major browsers (i.e. from the major vendors Google, Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft), is the only alternative to JavaScript for running code in web browsers (without the help of plug-ins, such as Flash, Java or
Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe Inc., Adobe's Run time environment, runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a v ...
; all being discontinued, as browsers are dropping plug-in support). Prior to its adoption, there was
asm.js asm.js is a subset of JavaScript designed to allow computer software written in languages such as C to be run as web applications while maintaining performance characteristics considerably better than standard JavaScript, which is the typical l ...
(a subset of JavaScript; and thus strictly works in all browsers), that's also used as a compiler target with efficient support in browsers such as Internet Explorer 11; and for such browsers that do not support WebAssembly directly, it can be compiled to asm.js and those browsers supported that way. Generally speaking programmers do not program in WebAssembly (or asm.js) directly, but use languages such as Rust, C or C++ or in theory any language, that compile to it.


Goals for development

The developer of the front end keeps these points in mind, utilizing available tools and techniques to reach this end.


Accessibility

With continuing development for mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, designers need to ensure that their site comes up correctly in browsers on all devices. This can be done by creating a responsive web design using stylesheets in CSS.


Performance

Performance goals are chiefly concerned with render time, manipulating the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to ensure that the site opens up quickly.


Speedy development

This technology enables speedy development and saves time.


References

{{Reflist Software development process Web development