Even as the average internet user interacts with the web through applications, the role of a front-end developer is going nowhere. While apps try to relegate websites to the history, the front-end web development industry is still innovating and growing at a rapid pace. Here are some of the front-end WebDev trends to watch out for in 2023.

Microservices Over Monolithic Architectures

Microservices have been taking over the enterprise sector ever since they entered mainstream adoption in the mid-2010s. Adopting a microservices architecture over a monolith has now become the status quo for web development, as evidenced by this survey by IBM. One of the key takeaways from this is that microservices users plan to increase their reliance on this technology as the years go by, with 77% of users believing that microservices are a ‘time-tested model of application development’. 

There is also a new approach of integrating micro services into frontends, termed the ‘micro-frontends’ approach. In this approach, the front-end is made up of various micro services that can be deployed independently by the team in charge of that service. This means that each micro service can be deployed and updated independent of each other, allowing the website to stay up to date with minimal downtime. 

Single-Page Applications

As internet speeds get faster around the world, users also expect webpages to load at a blazing-fast rate. Single page applications (SPAs) not only cut down on the loading time required for web pages, but also reduce the number of page reloads required to run applications on the web. 

Frameworks focused on building single-page applications such as Angular.JS, React, and Vue have been on the rise for the past few years, as evidenced by the Stack Overflow 2021 & 2022 Developer Survey. In both these surveys, React.js ranked near the top for most popular web frameworks used by developers. This not only points to a trend reinforcing the position of React, but also shows that SPAs are on the rise as React is one of the primary ways developers approach creating SPAs.

Autocoding Platforms

Ever since the launch of GitHub Copilot, coding-heavy tasks have begun to shed their weight of requiring code, with developers choosing to rely on AI instead. WebDev is no exception to this rule, as seen by this survey where 66% of web developers disagreed that their job is not in danger of being taken over by AI.

Keeping in line with this forward-looking sentiment, 65% agreed that they plan to use GitHub Copilot in their work, as it cuts down the amount of work required to be done by developers. This is also a very important trend to adopt, as it can change the way that an average web developer approaches their workflow.

Progressive Web Apps

Ever since they began adoption in the mid-2010s, progressive web apps are slowly becoming one of the mainstream approaches for web development. Creating a single, accessible, and fast web app has now become easier than ever, with multiple JS frameworks providing robust support for developing PWAs. 

The PWAs approach of being a platform-agnostic application is important in today’s day and age, especially as we are in the middle of an OS upgrade cycle. Even though they have been around for half a decade, PWAs are still going strong, and will continue to be one of the defining trends for WebDev in 2023.

Server-Side Rendering 

Even though SSR falls under the purview of back-end development, front-end developers also need to adapt to this new old trend. Back when all pages were built with HTML, all websites were rendered on the server side, but this system fell out of practice with the rise of JavaScript websites. 

However, current implementations of SSR, which involve rendering the web app on the server and then hydrating it on a client, have begun their rise to prominence. SSR is mainly used to serve large web apps with a low load time, adding on the benefit of being more SEO friendly than a client-side page built on JS. This trend also means that front-end developers need to adopt their websites to include more static elements to play with the strength of a SSR backend. Implementing SSR also means that developers can more reliably deploy single page applications with low loading times. 

Little Languages

Little languages is a term used to denote lightweight programming languages that are extremely domain-specific. In WebDev, a stand-in for a little language would be popular frameworks like React or Angular, which serve a specific purpose when deployed on a website. 

As mentioned previously, these frameworks have rising adoption rates every year, with many developers even using multiple frameworks to deploy applications, as seen by this visualisation from the Stack Overflow 2021 Survey. Any current web developer must learn at least the most famous of these frameworks to stay relevant in the coming years. 

Accessibility 

As the world moves towards a more inclusive mindset, more developers are creating applications with special considerations for accessibility. This survey from 2021 shows that web developers feel better and more accessible web sites would have a bigger impact than better assistive technology. 

As companies look to serve all kinds of audiences, budding web developers should look to include accessibility features in their future projects. These can be implemented using semantic HTML, making ‘lite’ versions of websites for those with low Internet speed, and support for screen readers. 

Conclusion

Even though many are heralding the end of modern web development, it is fairly obvious that the field is still growing and flourishing. Autocoding platforms might take over the coding part of the job, but a good front-end web developer will always be needed to solve for UI and UX and to keep up with the industry trends.