Front End Developer Road Map

Street Sign for Road Maps

This article came across my news feed today.  It struck a chord as Web Services has been working with clients who are developing their own Web Developer talents.  It’s an interesting new consulting track we are getting into as we learn different clients developer’s have various levels of skill – but all consider themselves web developers.  Its a world…

Web Development is a complex thing and so many parts to it.  Not everyone can know them all and there is always constant learning.  Choosing the right skill set for your developer is important – see this article on CUSO Magazine.  You need someone who knows the right parts to make you project successful, but also one that is not going to cost an arm and a leg.  This is one of the reasons having a team, like CU*Answers Web Services, where individuals support each other’s knowledge and skill deficits works well.

Anyway, back to the article.  This article is a visual roadmap of all the things you might need to learn as a front end developer for a website.  Not all websites require all these tools and concepts, but your web developer should probably be aware of most of them.  This roadmap is also changing as new tools and security concepts emerge.

Take a look at the article.  I hope you appreciate all that’s involved in web development.  Its not all just pretty pictures and HTML Code.

DNS Crash Course for Web Developers

Connecting the Internet Graphic

The Domain Name System (DNS) can be confusing.  It’s the phonebook of the Internet and what maps friendly human names (like cuanswers.com) to their actual Internet addresses (IP address) like 216.206.109.129.  To get your website actually online, you need to register your domain name with a Registrar and then set up DNS to point the domain to your web hosting provider.  You have to keep all these pieces wired up correctly and don’t forget your email services too.  DNS is the glue that binds it all together.

Here’s an 10 part Twitter thread that offers a quick crash course on what the parts of DNS are and why you need them.

 

Chris Achard on Twitter: “Confused by DNS Records? A, CNAME, ALIAS… Me too ? Let’s change that! (cheatsheet at the end) ? DNS Record crash course for web developers ?” / Twitter

Take a look.

Screen Resolutions 2015 Edition

Screen Resolutions Graph

When I started at CU*Answers nearly 10 years ago, our web site designs targeted an 800×600 browser size. This was considered the standard at the time. This meant that we considered the viewable space on any monitor with the web browser at full screen as 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall.

Over the years, the best practice moved to 1024×768 resolution and many sites were designed with this in mind. If you can picture these dimensions in your head, and relate them to TVs, you’ll notice they are the older square shape of TVs. It’s nearly impossible to find these now. TVs, and likewise computer monitors have moved to the wider letterbox, rectangular shape like cinema movie screens. Read More »

Firebug Rules!

An article over at the SitePoint Blogs reviews the handful of browser based web development tools that are now available. While the new tools are always welcome, our personal favorite tool, Firebug, still comes out on top for features, functionality, and interface. Of course, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for the final versions of Opera’s Dragonfly tool to show what it can do!