Trevin is the Sr. Director of Business Development at WebFX. He has worked on over 450 marketing campaigns and has been building websites for over 20 years. His work has been featured by Search Engine Land, USA Today, Fast Company and Inc.

Bootstrap is a popular, modern front-end/UI development framework. It’s feature-packed and will have most of the things you’ll need for developing responsive sites and apps.

Bootstrap has a 12-grid responsive layout, 13 custom jQuery plugins for common UIs like carousels and modal windows, a Bootstrap customizer, and more.

Bootstrap is well-documented, and this open source project has plenty of coverage in blogs and tutorial sites.

Bootstrap Tutorials

Bootstrap Tools and Resources

Foundation is another popular responsive front-end framework. With this modern HTML5 framework, you can approach web design either mobile first, or from big displays down to mobile sizes.

It has rapid-prototyping capabilities, a responsive grid system and much more.

Foundation is by ZURB, a company of product designers focused on providing web-based solutions.

Foundation Tutorials

Foundation Tools and Resources

Skeleton is a simple and clean responsive CSS boilerplate for HTML5 websites and apps. It’s got just the things you need, and nothing more.

Some notable features: a responsive layout grid, standard media queries for your device-specific CSS style properties, a CSS class for responsive image elements that scale with the layout grid, a PSD template for mocking up your web designs, and an HTML5 shiv for old web browsers.

If you want to get started with responsive design quickly, you should look into this open source project.

Skeleton Tutorials

Skeleton Tools and Resources

In 2010, HTML5 Boilerplate became one of the first, and subsequently, most popular open source front-end web development tools for getting HTML5 websites and web apps up and running in no time. It’s a compilation web development solutions that enable our sites to support modern web browsers.

Included in HTML5 Boilerplate is a mobile-friendly HTML template, placeholder icons, CSS resets for normalizing/standardizing your stylesheet property values, standard media queries for popular viewing screens, an HTML5 shiv for non-modern web browsers, and more.

HTML5 Boilerplate Tutorials

HTML5 Boilerplate Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description HTML5 Boilerplate Showcase Tumblr blog featuring websites and apps that use HTML5 Boilerplate Mobile Boilerplate offshoot of HTML5 Boilerplate specifically for mobile apps Sites Using HTML5 Boilerplate list of websites that use HTML5 Boilerplate Official docs of HTML5 Boilerplate

One of the newest kids on the block, HTML5 KickStart is a lean and mean package of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that promises to save UI developers hours of work.

At about 300KB, HTML KickStart packs quite a punch: UI components like stylish buttons and navigation bars, scalable icons (using Font Awesome), a responsive grid layout, a touch-enabled slideshow component and so on.

HTML KickStart Tutorials

HTML KickStart Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description Official docs of HTML KickStart

Montage is an open source HTML5 framework for building modern apps. This JavaScript library uses declarative binding which easily helps you keep your app data and UI in sync.

Montage also has a feature called Blueprints for associatively binding metadata onto your app objects — a pretty nifty function for dealing with lots of dynamic page elements.

Montage Tutorials

Montage Quick Start (montagejs.org)

Montage JS Getting Started (youtube.com)

Montage Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description Apps Made with Montage gallery and showcase of live apps that leverage Montage Mop open source tool for minifying your Montage files and customizing your Montage bundles Official docs of Montage

7. SproutCore

SproutCore is a front-end framework for building HTML5 apps rapidly.

It follows the MVC architecture pattern and promises its users the ability to craft native-like user experiences for the Web.

SproutCore Tutorials

SproutCore Guides (sproutcore.com)

Build mobile applications with SproutCore (ibm.com)

SproutCore Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description SproutCore Showcase demos and examples on this section of SproutCore’s website Official docs of SproutCore

8. Zebra

Zebra is a rich UI open source framework that leverages HTML5 canvas as the backbone of its rendering abilities.

Zebra says that using it “isn’t rocket science” and that you can get started in 5 minutes.

Zebra Tutorials

Simple UI Zebra Application (github.com)

How to create a color picker with Zebra (zebkit.com)

Zebra Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description OOP cheat sheet helpful resource for understanding the concept behind Zebra’s object-oriented programming logic Official docs of Zebra

CreateJS is a suite of open source JavaScript libraries and tools for creating rich, interactive HTML5 content. It consists of 5 modular JavaScript libraries. It will help you with implementing animation effects, supporting HTML5 audio in your site, and much more.

Adobe, Microsoft, and AOL sponsor this project.

CreateJS Tutorials

CreateJS Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description EaselJS demos a showcase of the capabilities of one of CreateJS’s JS libraries CreateJS CDN Libraries a public CDN for serving up your CreateJS files Official docs of CreateJS

Less Framework is a modern front-end framework for building responsive designs. Similar to Skeleton (discussed above), Less Framework focuses on being just a plain and simple layout grid framework.

It has 4 pre-built layouts: Default, Tablet, Mobile and Wide Mobile.

Less Framework Tutorials

Less Framework Tools and Resources

Tools/Resources Description Frameless Grid grid system concept, a collection of resources, and a good starting point for designers and developers using the Less Framework Less Grid useful grid overlay to help you develop your layouts Less Guides 4 Guides for popular Adobe software to help you mock up your layouts Official docs of Less Framework

Comparison Table

*Size is determined as the master package’s archive file size on disk (on MS Windows)

What Responsive HTML5 Framework/Boilerplates/Tools Do You Use?

I chose these 10 based on quantitative (i.e. development activity, popularity, etc.) as well as qualitative (such as reputation of the founders and simply personal preference) reasons.

These are my top picks. I’d like to know yours. Please write a review about your favorite open source HTML5 front-end web development framework or boilerplate and please also discuss your personal experience with it in the comments below.