Nice to meet you again in our blog. I know many of you reading this post are Professional Web Developers or on the way to becoming a Web Developer, so this blog post will help you to identify what skills you need and how you can develop them for your career.

Some of you may say: “Oh I’ve got it, I’ve been in this career for many years and I don’t want to learn any more, I only practice my skills now”. But did you know such tools as Tree House or Code Academy, which create a curriculum for people who want to be a Web Developer? The truth is they regularly add new content, new lessons and projects, so it’s undeniable that you’ll never finish learning.

Look at my guide for the very minimum requirements that you need to apply for a Web Developer position, but you have to remain in-the-know and master them.

HTML and CSS

HTML and CSS are put together because they complement each other. HTML is the core of a website. While HTML allows you to create websites, CSS allows you to manipulate or manage a web page. CSS is a way to “style” your site over many pages in a standard way.

To be a skilled Web Developers, HTML and CSS are the first two things you need to master. Check these components to see what you may have forgotten:

HTML - there might be a lot of milestones for you to learn about it:

• Tags: know how to place HTML tags so you can begin to manipulate text
• Manipulating text: learn how to use tags to make text bigger, smaller, or act as a header for your www pages.
• Linking pages: learn how to link from your page to any other website.
• Images/Media: learn all the things related to images in your page.
• HTML syntax for multiple specifications, especially including HTML 5

CSS - you have got HTML structure, now it’s time to make your website look great with CSS.

• Knowledge of properties and attributes to control the display.
• CSS class and IDS: the details of selectors, including multiple selectors, universal selectors, and class and ID selectors
• Familiarity with differences in CSS 2 and CSS 3.
• Proficiency with a CSS Preprocessor such as Sass or LESS.
• CSS Element Positioning: Now that you know how to style any HTML element you want, it’s time to learn how to place them exactly where you want them to appear on the page.

You can learn HTML and CSS through various channels and one of the most cost-effective ways is turning to free online courses from these sources:

W3Schools is the largest web developers site on the Internet. If you want to start to learn about HTML and CSS, it is a good place.

Codecademy is free. It turns learning into a game. You can earn badges to mark your progress and link up with friends to compare progress.

HTML Code Tutorials is an excellent site which provides really helpful and complete guides to creating web pages.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language that fully supports web programming. It is a scripting language that inserted the scripting code to develop the web pages. Javascript is one of the most popular Web development languages in 2014 because of interactivity and responsiveness.

• Complex interface: Javascript provides developers with the ability to create complex interfaces easily. Most web developers will already have some experience with JavaScript because it has a small learning curve and has been adapted all around the web.
• Fast server: The programming language of JavaScript is very useful and it communicates with the server very fast. Thus it will work fast for the user.
• Both front-end and back-end platforms: Some server-side technology likePHP, Ruby uses JavaScript to provide the front-end platform. Along with the front end it also supports the backend task of the web technology.
• Offline Supports:It is the most beneficial for users when there is no active internet connection.
• Usability: All browsers have JavaScript interpreters built in. No other languages have this tremendous advantage.

Are these points convincing enough for you to seriously study Javascript? And now, here are some sources you can take as references:

You can learn Javascript tutorials from website like: W3Schools, Codecademy (as I mentioned at CSS category)

Besides these, if you are a fan of listening or being taught by others, you may turn to video Javascript tutorials on YouTube, or from LJ website.

Agile tool set

Agile software development is a group of software development methods where requirements of collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams are increasing. It is an efficient way of managing IT development teams and projects.

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others to do it. Through this work we have come to value”. The Agile Manifesto reads, in its entirety.

There are many different agile development toolsets such as Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP) and others. You can choose which are suitable for your team or you will get the one your boss adopts.

If you are a Web Developer working in the IT field, then it is a big gap in your skills if you are not accustomed to Agile toolset. Within your organization you will know which developers have a role in reviewing other’s task and how subtasks support the main tasks. The Agile toolset will help you organize your work more cooperatively and effectively.

Git – a version control system

Web developers spend a lot of time on local development sites then just upload everything when they’re done. This is fine when there is one developer only and the changes are small, but when developers work with a team on something, that’s simply not feasible. In this case, a version control system like Git can help. This allows more than one person to work on the same project without interfering with each other.

Git allows a team to work together, all using the same files. It tackles the confusion when a lot of team members are working on the same files and making changes to them, each change then can be attributed to a specific developer.

Git can be run on your own locally, Github is both a remote server, a community of developers, and a graphical web interface for managing your Git project.

Mastering a version control system like Git is really important for both your own work and whole projects, too.

Know how to quickly find information

In one day, how often do you have to stop what you are doing to look up some information? Maybe very regularly, so the important thing you have to know is how to find the information you need quickly to optimize your performance.

Many tools exist to help lessen this time by providing quick access to common documentation or sites that you visit as a part of the development process.

• Alfred saves you time when you search for files online or on your Mac. Be more productive with hotkeys, keywords and file actions at your fingertips.
• Dash is “indispensible masterpiece for developers” according to Stefan Furst, Media Atelier maker of GrandTotal. Dash is an API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager. Dash stores snippets of code and instantly searches offline documentation sets.
• Zeal is a simple offline API documentation browser inspired by Dash(OS X app), available for Linux and Windows: It helps you quickly search documentation using Alt+Space (or customised) hotkey to display Zeal from any place in your workspace without internet connection.

If you don’t have any of these in your tool box, take them all to decrease your search time and do your best at work.

Whatever projects you work on, these skills certainly will help you achieve your goal very quickly and efficiently. Develop any skills that you lack and make yourself an irreplaceable member in your team.

Feel free to give me your feedbacks guys! See you in next posts.