Front-End Development is more Complex than You Think

At the beginning of my career, I thought that Front-End was just making the mock-up and adding some action with JavaScript, but the reality is that it is much more than that. Front-End development is becoming more and more complex and is taking on an increasingly important role in software development. The line between Backend and Front-End is blurring.

In this article, we will take an in-deep look at some significant things that we should start to take into account.

User experience (UX)

Good front-end engineers have good understanding of UX and building UI with great UX.

User Experience (UX) can be defined as any interaction a user has with a product or service.

UX Design focuses heavily on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and their limitations. It also takes into account the business goals and objectives of the company.

88% of online users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience.

“Any product that needs a manual is broken”

- Elon Musk

UX comprises 7 principles as created by Peter Morville, a pioneer in the field of User Experience and Information Architecture.

Useful: for a product to compete on the market, it must fulfil a purpose.

Usable: usability centres on making the journey for the user as efficient and intuitive as possible.

Findable: findability refers to the idea that the product must be easy to navigate.

Credible: it’s very important that an audience can trust that the product will be delivered the desire result, that also will last.

Desirable: this is all to do with the brand, the image identity, and emotional design.

Accessible: strong products should be accessible for a wide range of abilities.

Accessibility (a11y)

The power of the Web is in its universality.
Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.

Accessibility (often abbreviated to A11y — as in, “a”, then 11 characters, and then “y”) in web development means enabling as many people as possible to use websites, even when those people’s abilities are limited in some way.

Creating an application that’s accessible means that you’re making a better experience for all of your users.

Accessibility is essential for developers and organizations that want to create high-quality websites and web tools, and not exclude people from using their products and services.

Many aspects of accessibility are fairly easy to understand and implement. Some accessibility solutions are more complex and take more knowledge to implement.

It is most efficient and effective to incorporate accessibility from the very beginning of projects, so you don’t need to go back and to re-do work.

Internalization (i18n)

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing and developing a software product, so it can be adapted for users of different cultures and languages

i18n is the abbreviation for internationalization.

Internationalization plays a crucial role in the success of any software product, as it greatly impacts the customer experience.

Data State

In an application, state is the interface between your data from any kind of backend or local change and the representation of this data with UI-elements in the frontend. State is able to keep the data of different components in sync because each state update will re-render all relevant components. State can be a medium to communicate between different components as well.

Categories of states in web application:

1. Server state — Data resides at server or database which belongs to client application is called as server state.
2. Persistent state — When client makes a call to server and server responds with some state (data) that is called persistent state.
3. URL/Router state — Any information resides in URL is called as URL/Router state.
4. Client State — current client application state, after all manipulations from URL state, for e.g., applying some filter based on a URL parameter.
5. Transient State — current client application state, after all manipulations that are not represented by URL parameters.
6. Local UI state — State of UI components like button colour.

Performance

Web performance is the objective measurements and the perceived user experience of load time and runtime. Web performance is how long a site takes to load, become interactive and responsive, and how smooth the content is during user interactions — is the scrolling smooth? Are buttons clickable? Are pop-ups quick to load and display, and do they animate smoothly as they do so? Web performance includes both objective measurements like time to load, frames per second, and time to become interactive, and subjective experiences of how long it felt like it took the content to load.

As an internet user, you’ve experienced many a slow website. While this might only feel like a minor annoyance, the effects of poor performance can reverberate through an entire business.

Scalability

Modern web apps tend to have complex, feature-heavy frontends, which can pose many challenges when it comes to scalability.

Scaling a front-end application is about adopting the right set of practices that act as a roadmap in your journey to scalability.

Scalability is essential for modern apps. With scalable infrastructure, businesses can enjoy increased efficiency and quality, which contributes to a better reputation and a sharp competitive edge.

Security

In comparison to the backend, the frontend stores less sensitive data in your web application. But that’s not an excuse to neglect it. Not paying adequate attention to it could be your biggest mistake.

The front-end is the main gate to your web application, and it’s open to your users or clients. Think of it as the front door of your house. It’s the entrance for anyone coming over. Like most houses, yours has a backdoor, but it’s mainly used by members of your family and close friends.

Do you leave your front door unlocked just because it’s the main entrance? Of course not. You still lock it to ensure your safety. If anyone comes in, they have to do so with your permission. Otherwise, they could be held responsible for trespassing or breaking into your home.

Extensibility

Extensibility is a software engineering and systems design principle that provides for future growth. Extensibility is a measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can be through the addition of new functionality or through modification of existing functionality. The principle provides for enhancements without impairing existing system functions.

Recently, microservices oriented software architecture has gained much traction and aid in solving the monolith puzzle. The benefits are apparent — small and manageable services with autonomy in development and deployment. Efficient and effective scalability, easy maintenance, and independent updates are other significant benefits that microservices have brought along.

As frontends also face the same issue, can the same concept of decoupling applied to them? Indeed, yes! The same benefits can be extended to frontends when they are developed similar to microservices, aka as micro-frontends.

Conclusion

As we can see, Front-End is very complex when we want to make robust applications with a great user experience, accessible, international, with excellent performance, secure and scalable.

Let me know in the comments section, your opinion, is it easier than I am telling you?