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Interview questions to ask a front end developer

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

Generic Error messages

Recently I needed an method for displaying error messages that was nicer than alert boxes, unobtrusive and generic. I wanted to be able to output errors from PHP in the HTML that could then be displayed in an eye catching way, but also use the same method to display errors from JavaScript. This way you have [...]

Flex IE Object bug

My first flex app has been having some IE support issues. Mainly errors with making SOAP calls, but it was unclear if they were related to something else not loading. Which made the RIA not work, on IE but on everything else. My first port of call was the Object tag, as IE is the only [...]
Meta tags: Development, Flex, JavaScript

Gmail server errors... ooops!

Yesterday I had a problem with Gmail where I couldn’t get to my in box. I though this would pass but it didn’t and other people in the office were getting on fine. I started by clearing my cache and flushing my DNS but it still didn’t work on Safari, Firefox, Flock or Omniweb, even adium [...]
Meta tags: Ajax, JavaScript, Technology

Fun with google maps

Over the last few days at work I had some time to get creative with Google maps. I was asked to implement google maps in a pop up window, which having never done before I expected would take a fair amount of time. However implementing what we had seen on another site was more or [...]
Meta tags: Ajax, Development, JavaScript

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