Interview questions to ask a front end developer

Jan. 9, 2008 8 Comments Posted under: Ajax, CSS, Development, Hijax, JavaScript

Interview

This-morning I had to quickly run up some questions for someone’s second interview. We were looking for someone with good front end knowledge, so I knocked up some questions to ask them. I found these were very good at getting them talking, and gave them a lot of potential to show they had a strong knowledge in the field.

Let me know if you think there are some other good questions that will provoke some good discussions!

HTML Questions

  • What is a doctype?
  • What different versions of HTML are there, what’s the difference between transitional and strict?
  • What do you know about HTML 5, and do you think you will use it?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of using web standards.
  • Do you know what the trinity of web standards are? (Separation of, structure, behavior and presentation)
  • What is the concept behind the semantic web, and why does it matter?
  • Do you know what micro formats are?
  • What related blogs or websites to you read?

Accessibility Questions

  • What is accessibility and why does it matter?
  • What should you put in alt text for presentational images?
  • Why are, “click here” links bad to use?
  • Why do people use skip to content and skip to navigation links?
  • How can CSS aid accessibility?
  • How can you test for accessibility compliancy? Why do automated tests not guaranty accessibility.
  • What related blogs or websites to you read?

CSS Questions

  • What is the difference between using inline CSS and using an external CSS file. When would you use inline CSS?
  • What browser do you develop in?
  • What browsers do you test in?
  • What is the ACID2 test?
  • Who or what is WASP?
  • What are CSS hacks and what are they used for?
  • What related blogs or websites to you read?

SEO Questions

  • What would you said the main 4 search engines are?
  • What would you say the most important element in the head of an HTML document are?
  • What would you say the most important element in the body of an HTML document are?
  • How do search engines treat content inside an IFrame?
  • How can you convey information in an image to a search engine.
  • How can you convey information in a flash movie to a search engine.
  • What is keyword stuffing?
  • What is cloning?
  • How should you re-direct traffic from http://pixelbox.net to http://www.pixelbox.net ?
  • What related blogs or websites to you read?

JavaScript Questions

  • What is ECMAScript?
  • What is the DOM?
  • What is unobtrusive JavaScript? Why is it important? What is HIJAX
  • How would you add a JavaScript event to a link or button, and why?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of Frameworks?
  • What would you do if a framework could not provide the functionality you needed?
  • What frameworks have you used and why did you choose it?
  • What is browser sniffing and where would you use it? (trick question… never!)
  • What is Comet? What sites use it?
  • What is JSON? Why would you use JSON over XML?
  • What sites do you think use JavaScript well?
  • What industry blogs do you read?
  • How do you debug JavaScript
  • What problems have you had with IE when DOM scripting and how have you overcome them?
  • What related blogs or websites to you read?

Tools Questions

  • What software do you use to develop in and why?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of using WYSIWYG development tools?
  • What browser do you use to develop in and why?
  • What browser do you use on a daily basis, and why?
  • What is any, plugins or bookmarklets do you use?
  • What browsers do you test you work in?
  • What operating systems do you test your work in?
  • Do you use source control, if so what, if not why not?
  • Do you develop locally or on a remote server?
  • Do you know how to set up a web server, apache, MySQL etc

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Ajax, CSS, Development, Hijax, JavaScript. You can leave a comment and follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

8 Comments Leave a comment

  1. chris 9 January 2008 at 2:32 pm #

    How about:

    Your work will come under scrutiny from the people who are paying you but who do not necessarily understand any of the above questions, let alone the relevance of the answers.

    Are you prepared to ignore that purist voice in your head and hack, chop and spooge until your best laid plans are in tatters just to get the nod and get a project out the door?

  2. Rob 9 January 2008 at 5:26 pm #

    Good question Chris, but then what’s the correct answer?

  3. Ian 10 January 2008 at 12:38 pm #

    I like how

    “What related blogs or websites to you read?”

    is in each category. Give them plenty of chances to mention pixelbox :)

    also: “Who should you re-direct traffic from http://pixelbox.net to http://www.pixelbox.net ?”

  4. Ian 10 January 2008 at 12:39 pm #

    OK, it didn’t like the my pseudo regex there, but I was suggesting who -> how.

  5. Rob 10 January 2008 at 5:35 pm #

    Hah thanks Ian, do you fancy taking up the copy reader roll full time? ;)

  6. Recruiting a front-end developer at Promises of Progress

    [...] Pixelbox: Interview questions to ask a front end developer [...]

  7. Erik R 1 April 2009 at 6:58 am #

    I didn’t know that was called the “Trinity of Web Standards.” I just read about it in DOM scripting and found it was easier to code that way on top of all the nice forward-looking stuff. A lot of these questions could be answered by looking at a portfolio’s source code. I’m not sure what being a great CSS developer has to do with WASP or the acid test. Just hating IE without looking for evidence or support for why should be good enough.

  8. anonymous 15 November 2009 at 12:53 am #

    Nice work, thank you for compiling them.

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