What are Front-End Frameworks in Web Design?

Front-end frameworks in Web design are packages of files and folders created in standardized code to support the visual development of websites. Traditional website development focused on the complex logic and programming of the back-end of websites, but there has been a trend towards focusing on a front-end framework that is simple and user-friendly. Designing websites has never been easier because popular tools, frameworks and programming languages continue to be updated and released to the public.

Front-End Frameworks Components

Content management systems (CMSs), such as Drupal and WordPress, are popular because they are both written in PHP and easy to learn and deploy. WordPress used to be just a basic blogging platform, but is now a fully-fledged CMS framework that comes with extensive plugins that allow it to run any kind of website. Many freelance developers prefer to develop high quality WordPress themes and projects because of the cost and time savings. Drupal is full of popular web development tools, such as composer packages and templating engines.

Popular databases for the web development community include, Redis, MySQL, NoSQL, Postgres and RethinkDB. For example, Postgres has become a popular choice, because it is a relational database engine that is constantly upgraded with new features. The most traditional database of choice, MySQL, is still popular because it is an open source database system that is usually already installed in the hosting providers’ system. Traditional programs like MySQL are usually favored for content-rich back-end development projects. Finally, front-end frameworks are now becoming more and more compatible for mobile apps and platforms through the so called hybrid mobile frameworks.

Web Development Languages

PHP is a popular programming language because it offers excellent access speed to large code bases and CMS systems like Drupal and WordPress. Python now comes with Asyncio, which gives user type hints. JavaScript is one of the most popular languages because it continually upgrades features and is favored by most Internet browsers. Microsoft’s TypeScript is a language that compiles to JavaScript through static typing, which is favored by large teams and large code bases. It seamlessly integrates with Microsoft’s Visual Studio, which is an integrated development environment (IDE), and the heavily used, open source Visual Studio Code editor.

Node.js, which is a cross-platform and open-source JavaScript runtime environment, recently split into Node.js and io.js. However, the projects have recombined and offer active contributors for the separate versions of Node. This language is favor3ed because it is efficient, lightweight and built on Chrome’s V8 JaveScript engine. Swift 2 is Apple’s attempt to create an open source programming language. It has been ported to Linux, so it can create back-ends and server side software. Go is a simple programming language favored by startups and open source projects.

Related Resource: Interface Design

Finally, JavaScript is still one of the most important pieces of a web development stack and environment. Large corporations now favor using Angular.js as their go-to JavaScript framework. Anyone who wants to become a web developer should pursue a degree in web development, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These degree programs will teach programming languages and both back-end and front-end frameworks in web design.