Do you know Frontend Developers tend to make certain mistakes frequently in their web development journey? Frontend Development is a constantly evolving field with always new frameworks, updates, libraries, tools and technologie. With integration of cloud technologies, artificial intelligence and automation things have been quickly changing for developers and other fields. Most mistakes take place when developers want to deliver the project quickly to avoid missing the deadline.
In this blog article, we are going to learn more about some of the common mistakes that are made by beginners and even experienced professionals. We will also understand how to avoid making these mistakes frequently while developing websites.
Why Mistakes Frequently Occur In FrontEnd Development?
Frontend Development is a part of the full stack development which deals with creating and hosting user interfaces and making sure that the complete design is user friendly. There are many things to consider while designing the UI for a digital product such as typography, positioning, CSS, styling, responsiveness and more.
Any change in class, definition, declaration or other parts can cause multiple errors or even crashes in the applications. Hence, we see frequent errors in frontend designing. However, all these mistakes are not irreversible and can be fixed with proper approach. It is important to avoid making mistakes and follow the guidelines while performing the user interface designing.
5 Common Mistakes FrontEnd Developers Make & Solutions
Let us now discover some of the common mistakes that a frontend developers makes while designing their website’s interface. We will also discuss some of the major fixes we can do if there is a mistake in designing.
1. Poor Responsive Design
It is very important for the user interface to be responsive and accessible on all devices. Improper implementation of responsive design can lead to bad user experience on your platform. There are many elements which must be optimised as per the device size.
- Not testing design loading on different screen sizes i,e. Desktop, mobile, tablet.
- Using fixed width instead of flexible layouts for components.
- Sometimes users ignore the mobile first approach in the elements.
To solve these issues and implement responsive design we must use CSS flexbox and grid for responsive design. It is important to implement media queries like @media screen and (max-width: 768px). You can test all elements using tools like Broswerstack, devtools, and other responsive apps.
2. Ignore Performance Optimisation
This is a major cause which leads to poor load time and performance of a website. It is important for a frontend developers to keep design elements well optimised and not to overload it with a variety of elements which might reduce the performance of the overall application.
- Developers fail to optimise images and other components used in the interface.
- Most of the time using Javascript libraries unnecessarily can trigger collapse
- Poor handling of re rendering in React JS
Well these problems can be solved by using many methods such as compressing high or next gen image formats such as .png, .jpg, .jpeg formats to an optimised webP or AVIF format. It is also important to load scripts asynchronously. We will useCallback, useEffect and other properties to implement it. You can also enact lazy loading to improve your website loading speed.
3. Not Handling Errors Properly
The major reason for design failures sometimes are caused due to the poor handling of errors in the pages of a website. It is important to implement error schemes properly. Frontend developers often make mistakes while providing no error boundaries in react applications, poor handling of APIs failures and ignoring user feedback for errors on the pages.
Some possible solutions to ensure a proper handling of the errors are mentioned below.
- As a developer it is important to be familiar with the uses of try…catch for asynchronous API calls.
- It is important to implement react boundaries.
- For frontend developers it is important to ensure that a meaningful error message is displayed in case of errors or failures instead of a simple “something went wrong” message.
- Developers can collaborate with design teams to make a custom designed error page.
- Make sure to log errors with sentry or logrocket for debugging issues.
4. Writing Unmaintainable Code
Frontend Developers often involve themselves in writing un optimised codes filled with loops, recursion and other complex components. It is important to follow the best practices while writing codes with suitable comments and optimised methods.
It is important to control using excessive inline styling elements as it might cause issues while reusing those same elements in styling components. It is important to adopt best practices while writing codes for interfaces.
- It is important for developers to follow best practices while writing code. You can use tailwind CSS, styled components, CSS modules and other methods to write optimised codes.
- It is important to break down components into smaller and reusable components.
- Make sure you use some extensions or plugins such as husky, prettier which can help you maintain code consistency and readability.
5. Ignoring Accessibility Measures
Most of the time front developer ignore accessibility constraints by telling that they are complex and costly. However, to ensure a consistent and overall positive user experience it is important for developers to ensure accessibility for all platforms and users visiting the application.
Accessibility is an essential component of a friendly user interface as it ensures that even people with disabilities can have access to the application and ensures that they can successfully interact with the applications.
As a starter you can start with using semantic HTML elements with meaningful impact instead of just <div> tags. Also provide additional context for screen readers such labels and placeholders.
Additional Mistakes That Even Experienced Frontend Developers Make
Let us know some additional mistakes that even frontend developers with good experience in development tend to make. We will also learn how to help them avoid these mistakes.
1. Not Taking Care of a Proper Planning
It is very much important to plan the resources, research, tools and technologies during the project development life cycle as it improves the efficiency and productivity of the project. Also, it boosts the morale of the people working together on the project. A proper planning gives a right way towards handling the project accurately.
Poor planning can trouble developers during implementation of more features and scaling the application when there are more buttons to be added, layouts to be adjusted and random files have to be triggered.
“It is thus said that it is important to make a proper roadmap before execution. The well you plan the better you execute.”
2. Authentication without Full Authorization
This is a frequent case among frontend developers even in today’s era where everything is accessible it is important to hold the constraints guidelines very carefully. And, it is the duty of developers to ensure implementing all constraints measures to allow only authorised personnel to have access to a specific service.
It is important to make sure that it is a genuine user before giving the authorisation to use an application as it might be a phishing attack or an attempt to take advantage of a vulnerability in the system.
3. Missing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Most organisations fell on this part when it comes to doing proper SEO and ensuring that the website or application is visible to their targeted users. Organisations need to ensure that they fix all SEO issues to make their business more visible on an online platform. Hence, they must hire professionals or a team of professionals who can manage everything.
On the developers part it is important to scale every component and format by following the SEO guidelines and structure as it might help Google to have a better view of your application and help you achieve the rank you desire.
4. Cross Browser Support
Most of the time we often notice that a website or application fails to load on a specific website or browser. Hence, support for every website is not provided on the application which can raise serious concerns ahead. Developers are on a deadline to complete the project and roll out the delivery process where they often focus on design and implementation of the application. Frontend Developers often use one of the browsers such as Chrome. Safari or Bing for development which might not support other browsers due to security or policy reasons.
5. No Scalability
Majority of the application faces this issue when it comes to scalability it fails miserably. But why? Well it might be because the development team takes these issues for granted making it non scalable friendly. When it is time to scale your web application then it might fail even a single image modification might not be allowed. Hence, it is very much important to provide a scalable cloud or data solution to promote scalability of your application without any trouble.
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Frontend Developers Mistakes FAQs
Q1. Who are frontend developers?
Ans: Frontend developers are professionals who are responsible for designing a friendly user interface for an application. They have to make sure the design and implementation are responsive, quick, and scalable.
Q2. What are popular frontend frameworks?
Ans: Some of the popular frontend frameworks used by frontend developers are CSS, HTML, React.js, Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, and more.
Q3. How to avoid mistakes in Front end development?
Ans: Developers can avoid mistakes by properly planning the entire software development process and following it throughout the development journey. It is important to ensure proper scalability, performance optimisation, accessibility, SEO, and more.
Q4. What are some of the mistakes frontend developers make?
Ans: Some of the common mistakes that frontend developers make in their development journey are:
1. Poor Responsive Design
2. Ignoring accessibility & errors.
3. Not handling error definition
4. Writing unoptimised codes
5. Poor authentication
