How to Start Web Development And Design

We all use the web daily. We enjoy the interface, the design, and speed that comes with every webpage, but not everyone knows how to design and develop a website. The number of people interested to know how web development works and acquire the skills for web design keeps going up. This has led to the high enrollment in web developer Bootcamp where you can quickly learn the necessary skills needed to become a web designer/developer.

Pick A Code Editor

The most necessary tool for building a website is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or code editor. This tool is used to write the code and markup that makes up a website.

There are several good available code editors, but currently, the most efficient is the Visual Studio Code. VS Code is a lite version of Microsoft’s IDE called Visual Studio. VS Code is free, fast, easy to use, and you can use its themes and extensions to customize it to your specifications.

Sublime TextVim, and Atom are other code editors that have helped web developers and designers to understand the field overall

UNDERSTAND THE STRUCTURE OF THE WEB

The frontend of every website consists of three types of files: JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. These files are loaded into the browser through the client-side.

JavaScript

This is a programming language built to run in a browser. With JavaScript, you can make dynamic websites that would respond to the different inputs from users and other sources. As an aspiring web designer, you can easily develop your skill in JavaScript through web developer Bootcamp.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the foundation of a website. HTML file comprises of all the content of a webpage, and tags are used to show the different types of content

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) lets you design the HTML content, so it looks fancy and nice. With CSS, you can layout the elements of a website, add custom fonts and colors to your desire. You can use CSS to create shapes and animations as well.

CSS is very broad, and sometimes developers without a web developer bootcamp training or other official training tend to skip the important parts of CSS and move JavaScript.

GET THE RIGHT WEB TOOLS

For aspiring web developers and designers, there are some web tools other than CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Let’s take a look at those.

BUILD TOOLS

Build tools and module bundlers like Gulp, Parcel, or Webpack are a very important part of front-end workflow. These tools can be used to run tasks and process web files. A developer can use them to compile Sass file to CSS, operate a local web server, transpile ES6 files down to ES5JavaScript files, and many more.

PACKAGE MANAGERS

They are a collection of online software that is majorly open-source. Each software (known as Package) is available for developers to install and use in their projects. These packages are like plugins, so instead of writing everything from the beginning, you can help yourself with the already written ones.

Node Package Manager (NPM) is a popular package manager, and there are advanced ones as well, like Yarn, but you will need a proper training or a web developer bootcamp to understand the basics of using Yarn.

MASTER VERSION CONTROL

Also, know as Source control, this is a system that keeps records of every change of code that is made in project files. It also allows developers to revert to previous changes if they encounter errors while coding.

Git is the most used open-source version control system. Using Git, developers can store all their files and change the history in collections.

There are several ways to learn Git and GitHub, has given some online explanations, but to completely understand, taking web developer bootcamp will prove a far better choice

LEARN RESPONSIVE DESIGN

A responsive design makes sure that the style used on a website will look good on all platforms – Mobile phones, Desktops, and tablets. The main steps to a responsive web design include using the right widths and flexible sizing for elements.

For example, instead of using a static 400px setting on your content, you can get user media query and set your content at a width of 100% on mobile and 50% on desktop.

These days, mobile traffic is outshining desktop traffic, so it is vital to learn how to create a responsive design for web sites.

 JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORKS ARE IMPORTANT

Once you understand the fundamentals of vanilla JavaScript, it is crucial to learn at least one JavaScript framework (essential for those who want to go into full-stack development). These frameworks have pre-built components and structures that allow developers to build apps faster than those starting from the scratch.

There are three main choices of JavaScript frameworks:

  • React
  • Angular
  • Vue

React is currently the most popular framework; it was created by Facebook. You can start learning  React on their website, but they cover just the basics, web developer Bootcamp covers premium React.js courses for both beginners and experts.

Angular was created by Google, and it was the first big framework. Although React.js has overtaken it, Angular is still very popular and essential to learn.

Vue is the newest of the three main frameworks. A former Angular developer created it. Although it is smaller than Angular and React, it is speedily gaining popularity on them because it's easy to learn and fun to use.

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE ARE CORE SKILLS

Every web designer and developer need to learn a few programming languages to write logic and functions for web apps. The server then combines these codes and sends the results back to your client.

There are several programming languages, but the most popular for the web include Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, and Java.

All these languages are essential as they can work both independently or cooperatively, depending on the task. Learning just one programming language can be limiting as several projects would require more than one programming language. Also, some languages are easier to learn and more efficient than others. A web developer Bootcamp will keep you up to date with the essential programming languages for web developers and web designers.