Discover a straightforward, free HTML5 template that’s designed for ease of use and customization.This template offers a foundational structure for your website, complete with a downloadable HTML5 file that includes annotations for your web development project. The image below showcases the template’s boilerplate markup, which serves as a blank HTML document template for HTML5-compatible web pages. Access the download button to obtain your HTML5 template. Continue reading to learn about the contents of the folder and how to utilize the template. Open the HTML5 code template in your preferred program and proceed to fill in the necessary details.The annotated comments within this HTML5 code template provide insights into each element within the document.From my perspective, this HTML5 template represents the essential foundation for a functional HTML5 document. I’d like to delve into some of the design choices made for this template.Script PlacementIt is advisable to position render-blocking scripts towards the end of your HTML document, just before the closing tag, or opt not to use them at all.This approach ensures that visual content, CSS, and the document object model are rendered first, enhancing the perceived speed and performance of your web pages.However, referencing scripts at the end may not always be feasible, so you may need to move script references higher in the HTML document. Furthermore, to facilitate progressive enhancement, it’s recommended to use the HTML5 attribute with script references to enable asynchronous and parallel loading in compatible web browsers.Example:Important Note: These script placement practices can severely disrupt your web pages if you are not proficient in JavaScript’s loading, rendering, and execution processes. My understanding of this comes from past experiences where I have inadvertently broken numerous web pages.The “viewport” Meta TagHere’s a detail specific to small screens:Without this meta tag, the web page might appear as follows: As seen above, Mobile Safari will attempt to render the page at its default width of 980px using the device’s native PPI.However, by utilizing the “viewport” meta tag in this template, we instruct the browser to scale the content to match the device’s width.This results in the following: The latter is more readable.HTML5 Template Support for IE 9 and BelowIn light of the Internet Explorer team’s commendable efforts to encourage users to update to the latest browser version, there still remains a significant number of users who utilize IE 9 and earlier versions.This template includes conditional comments for serving html5shiv by Alexander Farkas and Respond.js by Scott Jehl to enable rendering of new HTML5 elements and media queries.These scripts will be served via a reliable public CDN, and the conditional comment will only load these scripts for users on IE 9 and below.Additionally, the markup template features the following meta tag:This explicitly instructs Internet Explorer to use the most current layout engine available on the user’s machine. As we progress towards the future and the use of outdated IE browsers becomes less of an issue, I would like to be able to remove these browser-specific elements from the template.While some may argue that browser-specific markup doesn’t belong in a generic boilerplate, I favor practicality and pragmatism over semantics in this case.A small amount of additional markup and conditionally serving two tiny scripts for those who need them is a reasonable compromise to enable the use of HTML5 elements and media queries.Android and iOS Home Screen Icons for the HTML5 Code TemplateAbout 36% of this HTML5 template is dedicated to supporting a specific browser family, so I have decided not to include default home screen icon references. However, it is a good practice to add Android and iOS home screen icons to your web pages, as these are two of the most popular mobile operating systems.Here is my suggested markup for this:The above will ensure compatibility with both Android and iOS home screens (from the lowest-resolution iOS device up to the iPad with Retina display) for now.Note: Don’t forget to fill in the blank references to direct them to the URI of your icons.For more information on the dimensions your icons should be, refer to these documents:
for Android
for iOS
On a side note, I hope that in the near future, we can all agree on a non-proprietary method for including bookmarking icons that utilize an open-source image format.HTML Indentation StyleMy preference for HTML documents is to begin indentation at the first child element within the element, as this is more practical and readable for developers. Typically, after the boilerplate items are established, they rarely change during the development of the front-facing markup.However, the content within the element often changes frequently during front-end development. For instance, I frequently update element hierarchies, types, and nested structures while constructing the layout and content structure.Starting indentation at the element, which would be the semantically correct action, would result in a second tab stop by the time we reach the document’s core content.Dealing with deep hierarchies, extensive nesting, and abundant content, those two extra tab stops accumulate into a significant amount of re-indenting.Additionally, I sometimes work on small screens, and this type of indentation scheme makes code difficult to read and scroll through. Instead, this is what I prefer to do:This HTML5 template is designed with the above markup-indenting style in mind. This style allows me to disregard the boilerplate material while also making it easier to work with the elements still under development.Should you find my indentation style to be an issue — and I completely understand if you do, as these types of details can be烦扰人的 — you can easily customize this template to fit your preferred source-formatting system.Alternatively, consider using Grunt in conjunction with libraries that can automate indentation or minification for you before deploying to production.No permission is required to use this HTML5 template.For clarity: The template is free from any copyright restrictions. You are free to use, sell, modify, and distribute the template without permission, attribution, or any other requirement.The HTML markup is under CC0 1.0 Universal.Note: I do not own the external scripts referenced in the template, so the public domain dedication pertains solely to the markup I created. Find HTML5 template information on GitHub