As a front-end developer, I’m constantly trying to learn new skills and technologies and adding to what I already know. Front-end developer job postings, however, vary from posting to posting so the list of different languages, libraries, and technologies that could theoretically fall under the category of front-end developer skills is quite large.
Skills for Front-End Developers:
Here’s a list (that I’ll continue to update) containing a wide variety of skills and technologies that I think all front-end developers should be working on learning, at least to some extent. I certainly don’t know all of these, nor do I expect anyone else to.
The list is not necessarily in any particular order, but I tried to keep the more rudimentary stuff at or near the top. Also, many of the items overlap others, so there’s a lot of cross-over within the list. And of course the list has lots of potential for improvements (more on that below).
- XHTML / HTML5
- CSS2.1 / CSS3
- JavaScript / Ajax
- jQuery
- HTML5 Boilerplate
- Modernizr
- YUI Library
- OOCSS
- CSS Grids
- CSS Frameworks / Resets
- Progressive Enhancement / Graceful Degradation
- HTML and CSS Specifications (W3C / WHATWG)
- UX / Usability
- Website Speed / Performance
- Dojo / MooTools / Prototype
- Responsive Web Design
- Mobile Web Development
- Mobile Web Performance
- Cross-Browser / Cross-Platform Development
- Document Object Model (DOM)
- IE6-IE8 Bugs and Inconsistencies
- CSS Pre-Processors (LESS / Sass)
- Version Control (Git / GitHub / CVS / Subversion)
- HTML5 APIs
- OOP
- PHP
- Ruby on Rails
- MySql
- Accessibility
- WAI-ARIA
- Microdata / Microformats
- Internationalization
- HTML5/CSS3 Polyfills
- Functional Programming
- JSON
- Localization
- Content Strategy
- Node.js
- Offline Web Apps
I may eventually turn this post into an extended list divided into categories plus links to articles and tutorials where these subjects can be learned or mastered — but for now you’ll just have to trust your Google searching abilities if you want to learn more on any of these.
Please Contribute
The list is a rough first draft, and I’d be happy to update it and refine it based on any feedback. So please offer your suggestions on how it could be improved and/or expanded and I’ll make any necessary updates.
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