Whether you’re an employee of a Fortune 500 company or someone who runs their own freelance business, your frontend development skills will be in demand in 2022. To ensure that you stay relevant in the constantly-evolving world of computer science, it’s important to keep up with what changes are happening and what the future holds. We spoke with some professionals in the industry to learn about the top front-end development trends to watch in 2022 and how they might affect your career. Here’s what we learned.

JavaScript will continue to be used
This is a no-brainer. JavaScript is here to stay. In five years, it will be used more than ever before (yes, I know—it already is now). If you are not a developer and want to participate in web development trends of today, then learning JavaScript will be beneficial to you. The job market looks very good for JavaScript developers moving forward as there's a growing demand for experienced front-end developers who know how to work with newer frameworks like Angular and Vue.

This doesn't mean that older technologies like jQuery won't still have use but new innovations will continue change how we build and view websites of tomorrow. This makes JavaScript—in my opinion—the most important language to learn right now if you want to understand what's ahead in future website development trends.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are growing
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) offer an alternative to native apps. These applications are faster, more reliable, and deliver all of a traditional app's features. This year, we will see more and more PWA’s being deployed. And now that Chrome OS has enabled support, developers will have another area to deploy their apps into.

Static Site Generators (SSG) are growing
Static site generators are a recent development that allow front-end developers to build static sites without resorting to hand-coding HTML files. SSGs generally have built-in support for server side rendering and easy deployment of generated websites to production servers using a variety of host services. One such hosting service is Netlify, which provides immediate preview and instant deployment when changes are pushed, as well as tight integration with GitHub or Bitbucket source control providers. Combining Netlify with a popular SSG like Jekyll allows developers to start working on new websites without having to think about code deployments, server configurations, or web hosting.

CSS4 is being used more commonly
CSS4 is a large update to CSS, adding new features and moving forward to support modern designs. In particular, people are starting to use 'border-radius' (rounding of corners) and 'box-shadow' (drop shadows), which were not widely used because of browser limitations. Now, as most browsers support CSS4, more designers are using these features to create stunning designs. There is also a new transition property which is similar to animation but can be applied at an element level rather than only affecting elements inside an animation block. This allows developers and designers alike to move away from Flash in favor of a more dynamic approach with JavaScript or jQuery libraries such as jQueykick or GSAP

ReactJS is still being used often. AngularJS too
ReactJS is a JavaScript library developed by Facebook that makes it easier to build and maintain rich internet applications. If you want to use ReactJS, you should know that it isn't just an isolated library but can also be combined with other libraries, components and frameworks. For example, React Native lets web developers easily create native mobile apps using ReactJS. AngularJS is a framework developed by Google based on JavaScript that makes it easier to build single-page applications. A single-page application is used when a site has most of its content loaded from one HTML page instead of multiple pages loaded from servers as users click links or scroll down through search results. This structure allows for faster load times because only one page needs to be downloaded rather than multiple pages each time a user clicks on something new.

Site speed optimization is becoming more important
According to research by Google, a one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. And one way to accomplish that goal is to set your server’s time-to-first-byte value as low as possible — ideally around 200 ms or less. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why high page load times can have a direct impact on your bottom line. Check out our guide on frontend performance optimization for more details and considerations when speeding up your site.

There are new frameworks coming out all the time, but old ones aren’t going anywhere
Angular is one of those frameworks that has really come a long way. It started out as a fairly basic front-end development framework and has since become quite complex. While there are new, emerging frameworks like React or Vue, don’t count Angular out yet. It still offers some compelling features that businesses are looking for to create dynamic user experiences. Let’s take a look at what makes Angular an attractive choice moving forward and how you can create dynamic user experiences with it today.

Conclusion
Frontend development is always changing, and it seems like every few months we get a new hot framework or language. No matter what trends emerge over the next few years, it seems that there will be one constant—people need websites to be fast and easy to use. Designing for performance and accessibility should remain priorities as well. I guess what we can say is, expect more of everything to continue! The web industry is filled with skilled professionals from all around the world who continually innovate with new ideas, frameworks, languages, and other technologies.