Front-end Development with ASP.NET Core, Angular, and Bootstrap

2The Front‐End Developer Toolset

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• The types of tools used in front‐end development
• The main actors in each type of tool

After the previous chapter's brief overview of what comes with the latest server‐side frameworks, ASP.NET Core and ASP.NET Core MVC, this chapter gives you a foundation in front‐end development, showing when you need additional tools to get your work done more efficiently.

The chapter covers the following categories of tools:

• JavaScript frameworks: These frameworks help you build complex web interfaces by bringing to front‐end development the best practices that are typical of server‐side systems, like the model‐view‐controller (MVC) pattern, the model‐view‐view model (MVVM), dependency injection (DI), routing, and many others.
• CSS frameworks: Developers are generally bad at making web apps look good and consistent. CSS frameworks provide a set of styles and UI components with which you can build web applications that look as if they were created by professional designers. CSS frameworks also help address the issue of responsive design that adapts to multiple resolutions and screen sizes and can also apply complex animations and transitions.
• Package managers: Systems are becoming more and more a mix and match of different components, many of which depend on other components. Managing all these dependencies and correct versions would be a nightmare if it wasn't for package managers.
• Build systems: If you are coming from a pure .NET ...