With the recent 4.0 release, HTML5 Boilerplate (H5BP) is now available under the MIT licence and includes upgraded libraries and new features. The HTML5 Boilerplate project provides web developers with pre-designed front-end code (also known as a boilerplate) that they can use to quickly build robust and adaptable web apps and sites. H5BP includes components such as the HTML5 template itself, an optimised Google Analytics snippet, the latest versions of the jQuery and Modernizr libraries, and Normalize.css, which offers an alternative way of making CSS-based web page design more portable between browsers.

The new version of HTML5 Boilerplate improves the bundled Apache compression configuration. A new example media query has been added for HiDPI devices such as Apple's latest MacBook Pro laptop with Retina display. Normalize.css has been updated to 1.0.1, which includes support for legacy browsers (the more recent 2.0.x releases dropped support for Internet Explorer 7 and earlier, Firefox 3.6 and earlier, and Safari 4 and earlier), and has been separated from the rest of the CSS in the package. jQuery and Modernizr have been upgraded to versions 1.8 and 2.6.1 respectively. The developers also note that the hot pink text selection colour has now been replaced with a more neutral colour, and that superfluous inline comments have been removed.

According to the developers, HTML5 Boilerplate is already used by a number of sites including those from Google, Microsoft, NASA, Nike and Creative Commons. Other H5BP projects include a mobile version and web server configuration templates for various platforms.

Further information about HTML5 Boilerplate 4.0 can be found in the change log. Source code and documentation are available on the project's GitHub page.

See also:

Consistent browser rendering with Normalize.css, a report from The H.

(crve)