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Frontend facelift: development trends for 2024
Dive into the future of frontend development, exploring trends set to redefine user experience and engagement in 2024.
Key takeaways
- PWAs: Progressive Web Apps enhance mobile browsing with app-like experiences, crucial for the growing mobile user base.
- WebAssembly (Wasm): Enables high-performance web applications by allowing code execution in languages other than JavaScript.
- Jamstack Architecture: Promotes faster, scalable web applications by decoupling frontend and backend.
- SSR and SSG: Server-side rendering and static site generation improve loading times and SEO, essential for dynamic and content-heavy sites.
- Utility-first CSS: Tailwind CSS and similar frameworks offer efficient styling with reusable utility classes.
- Accessibility Focus: Ensuring web inclusivity and compliance with legal standards becomes increasingly important.
- Headless CMS: Facilitates versatile content delivery, optimizing frontend development for various devices.
- Emerging Technologies: AR, VR, and AI are poised to introduce immersive experiences and personalization in web development.
Frontend development in 2024
Frontend development plays a rockstar role in shaping the user’s first impression of a website or application – and by extension, an entire business.
After all, the interface, navigation, and overall design directly influence user experience, making frontend development crucial for user engagement and satisfaction. A well-crafted frontend not only enhances visual appeal but also contributes to a seamless and intuitive user journey, fostering brand loyalty.
Are you ready to enchant users with the latest tools and features? Follow this guide to the most prominent frontend development trends to deliver enhanced user experiences in 2024.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) offer a native app-like experience to deliver faster load times with streamlined design and functionality. Most attractively, PWAs are able to work offline, making them an essential frontend component for businesses seeking to enhance user engagement.
The number of global mobile phone users is expected to reach 7 billion in 2024, so developers are using PWAs to meet the demands of people using their mobiles to conduct their lives both online and offline.
WebAssembly (Wasm)
WebAssembly, or Wasm, is a binary instruction format designed to enable high-performance execution of code on web browsers using languages other than JavaScript. It allows frontend developers to perform safe and efficient execution directly in web browsers using languages such as C, C++, and Rust, providing almost native speed and performance.
WebAssembly is a game-changer for performance-intensive tasks on the web, making it particularly useful for applications requiring complex computations, such as gaming or multimedia processing. In 2024, we’ll see new possibilities being created for faster and more efficient web applications.
Jamstack architecture
Jamstack, a combination of JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, is a new web development approach that focuses on decoupling the frontend and backend to enable faster, safer, and more scalable web applications.
In Jamstack frontend architecture, all dynamic functionalities are handled by APIs to deliver greater flexibility and scalability. The architecture promotes pre-rendering of markup during the build phase, leading to improved performance and faster loading times for end-users.
Jamstack uses microservices to allow frontend web development wizards to choose the best tools and services for each specific functionality. This helps create a modular and efficient development process that businesses will look to leverage in 2024.
Server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG)
Server-side rendering (SSR) involves generating the HTML for a webpage on the server before sending it to the client’s browser (as opposed to client-side rendering where the browser handles more of the rendering process).
SSR enhances page load times and supports improved search engine optimisation by delivering pre-rendered content directly to users, especially beneficial for dynamic web applications.
Static site generation (SSG) is the process of pre-rendering entire web pages during the build process, resulting in static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. It allows developers to generate static content that can be served directly to users, eliminating the need for server-side processing during runtime.
SSG enhances website performance, reduces server load, and simplifies hosting, making it an efficient choice for content-centric sites and applications with relatively stable content.
As digital applications continue to ramp up functionality and speed in 2024, both SSR and SSG are essential to remain faster than your competitors.
Utility-first CSS frameworks
Utility-first CSS focuses on creating small, reusable utility classes for styling rather than writing custom CSS. Tailwind CSS, for example, provides a comprehensive set of pre-defined utility classes which allows developers to build and style interfaces quickly without writing extensive CSS code.
This approach is a significant shift in how developers approach styling web applications. It streamlines the development process, creates consistency, and offers greater flexibility in styling web components, making it a popular frontend web development trend for 2024.
Accessibility in 2024
As society becomes more inclusive, it must be reflected in our design and technology as users expect to experience equal access and inclusivity not only in the real world but in the digital realm, too.
Accessible web development will grow in 2024 to create more inclusive and user-friendly websites. Frontend developers must continue to implement accessibility features like semantic HTML, alternative text for images, high colour contrast, and keyboard navigation.
Inclusive frontend development not only benefits users with disabilities but also impacts the overall user experience, as accessibility features often improve the experience for all users. There are also legal obligations that are becoming increasingly strict which businesses must abide by.
Headless CMS and decoupled architectures
Although headless content management systems (CMS) or “headless architecture” is predominantly a backend function, its effects on the frontend are enough to warrant importance for any serious frontend developer looking to level up in 2024.
Headless CMS stores business logic as APIs and is able to push content to the frontend according to device/application. This means that you don’t have to design the frontend for each device allowing you to work quicker and smarter, not harder.
Bonus: Potential trends
We’re pretty sure the above trends will leave an indelible mark on 2024. While we can’t be certain about the following, we fancy ourselves as trend speculators 🙂
AR & VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are enjoying immense hype lately as these immersive technologies are entering the mainstream in ubiquitous fashion. Naturally, the need for frontend capabilities to accommodate these technologies will grow.
Frontend VR and AR in web development will use real-time 3D rendering, advanced animations, spatial audio, and diverse input methods to bring 2D experiences to life. Developments in WebGL, WebXR, and other browser APIs enable the creation of immersive experiences directly within web browsers.
With the evolution of new frameworks like Three.js, A-Frame, and React-VR that simplify the integration of VR and AR features, 2024 might be the springboard for bringing immersive experiences to the masses.
AI
AI simplifies the most time-consuming steps in frontend development: from the build and coding to automated testing and QA tasks. We expect to see continued drives towards improving personalisation, with AI-powered systems that tailor content, recommend products, and adapt the interface to suit each individual user’s preferences.
Stay on the frontend of trends in 2024
We’re quite certain that if you leverage at least one of these frontend development trends you will see a significant rise in enjoyment from your users. After all, these tools, processes, and features are designed with one thing in mind: enhancing the user experience.
How many of these trends are you planning to leverage in 2024?
Enhance your frontend with specialist guidance
If you are looking to implement the latest programming languages, frameworks, technologies, and architecture into your frontend, get in touch with us today.
Pavel Bazhenov
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