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This is a list of some things considered relevant from the perspective of someone reviewing a job candidate’s front-end development abilities. I jotted these from various articles and forums posted online.

• Understand DOM (what it is, why it’s related)
• XML / Namespaces
• Understanding javascript
• Knowing approaches to componentization (XBL, HTC) – plus
• Understand object-oriented principles
• Javascript closures
• Memory leaks in browsers
• Good HTML / CSS design principles

As in reviewing an online portfolio of examples:

• Does HTML and CSS validate?
• Does presentation render consistently between browsers (cross browser compatability)
• Does the work have javascript errors? Are the errors making their way to the presentation layer, or caught with a try / catch block?
• Form validation
• regex
• MM_preloader? (bad?)
• Be able to properly break down a design into its semantic components
• Name at least 3 things that fail in IE and the workarounds used for IE

As a task during an interview or pre-qual:

• Create a company intranet that follows:
  1. a simple 3 column layout
  2. a good looking table using CSS
  3. dynamic loading using XML and javascript