Snofs

This article is the first in a series of 30 articles dedicated to Front-End Architecture. I have been working with front-end related tasks for more than 10 years and realized that I haven’t documented my findings very well. This project will change that.

In this series of article the focus will be general and the use-case, or scenario, is a bigger redesign (hardware, software, design and user interactions) of a high traffic web. The issues raised and answered in these articles is applicable on projects where everything is made from scratch as well. The goal is to put a lot of my findings and experience on paper and to share the knowledge I have that may help someone facing architectural decisions within the front-end area.

The first question in this series of articles is What exactly do you mean when you talk about Front-End Architecture?. There is no simple answer to the question, but I will try to answer it here in brief and in the series of articles in detail.

I believe that Front-End Architecture deals with everything that is in some way user-oriented. It is not as simple, as to say that front end architecture is the presentation layer in an application. A lot of times user-oriented tasks has effects on a big part of the system you are building. In my profession I have always tried to focus on things within and above the business layer. A lot of decisions made in the front-end may effect data models and choice of server software and such things, but I try to stay out of those areas, as I am certain that there are people enjoying those issues and does it better without my involvement.

Things I have worked with in my profession as Front-End Architect:
- Business logic in Java
- Business logic in VB.NET
- Business logic in PHP
- GUI logic in JavaScript
- GUI logic in Java
- Definition of data models for XML or JSON transfer
- Definition of API:s for 3rd party developers
- Analysis of MVC-frameworks
- Analysis of Presentation Engines
- Analysis of Server Side Libraries
- Analysis of Client Side Libraries
- Analysis of Clients
- Analysis of Mobile Clients
- Analysis of Competitors
- CMS Analysis
- Performance Reviews
- Documentation
- SEO
- I18n
- L10n
- Troubleshooting
- Payments
- User Interaction Design
- Use Case Definitions
- Mockups
- Prototypes
- Requirement Specifications
- Requirement Analysis
- Research
- Usability Studies
- Statistics
- A/B Testing
- Business Processes
- Conversion Rates
- CSS
- Ajax
- Semantic Markup
- Microformats
- Affiliate Integration
- Cowboy (NS4)
- Sumo-wrestler (IE)
- Kamikaze Pilot (Maintain JavaScript by programmers with too much ego and too little knowledge)

The list may grow during the articles. From the next article we will start focusing on some of the areas listed above. The first article will be on “Front-End Architecture: The Pre-Study”.