25/06/2012

Using HTML5 Boilerplate

I recently completed a HTML5 bootcamp course in order to get my HTML and CSS skills up-to-date with HTML5. One of the things that came out of the course was the HTML5 Boilerplate project which gives you a base structure for a HTML5 site.

In the course we used Aptana Studio as the IDE and one of the great features of this IDE is that it has a web site wizard that uses this HTML5 Boilerplate template to create a web site. All you need to do is create a new Web Project, select the Boilerplate template in the wizard and Apatana downloads from Github the code from the project.

What you get with the HTML5Boilerplate template is a full site template which contains all the HTML, JavaScript and CSS to create a HTML5 site that runs in the browser, on mobile and tablet devices. Then from this template website you can create your site.

A couple of cool features the template includes is, jQuery, icons for links if your site is installed on a mobile or tablet device, all the conditional statements to load a IE7 appropriate CSS file, modernizer JS, so you can check what HTML5 features are available in the browser and finally a 404 error page that all sites need.

If you go to the HTML5Boilerplate website you can download the code, but there is also a number of videos that give you an overview of what HTML5 Boilerplate is, and a further deep dive into what the project is.

So if you don't want to use Aptana, you can still download the template code, its a great starting point for a HTML5 site.

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