Documentation: How to use Boilerplate effectively

[h5bp]

Documentation: How to use Boilerplate effectively

[nimbupani]

What are the print styles and why do you need them?

[Garowetz]

• What is profiling, and how do I use it, why do I want it
• What if I want a different JavaScript Library

Maybe a line by explanation? So on the html5boilerplate.com website each line (or sections of lines) could link to an article explaining. Or the user could click on the line/section and a pop up could provide a brief explanation and links to other references.

[matthewotto]

• How should script.js and plugin.js be used? What should go in these files?

[paulirish]

• How do I integrate with 960.gs ?
  • Add 960.css after the style.css of boilerplate. Ignore 960's reset and text. You'll have to rebuild some headline styles yourself, but you'll be better for it. The grid works very well with the rest of boilerplate.

[pandeiro]

Maybe a line or link with explanation of the empty 'frown' attribute inside a span tag in 404.html? Would these custom empty attributes (and the accompanying CSS selector syntax element[attribute]) work at all in IE?

(I really like that as a shorter syntax for styling a class of elements BTW. Very cool.)

[paulirish]

Why are the analytics coadz at the bottom? Google says top!

The advantage to placing it in the head is that you will track a users' pageview even if they leave the page before it has been fully loaded.

To me, I wouldn't want that counting as a page view.

I can imagine some cases where very customized analytics is in place and I want that level of control and visibility. But I don't think this is the 80% case.

[paulirish]

One nice thing I noticed is the use of version numbers on the css link; "style.css?v=1". I use this for a couple of reasons that are very useful but I'm sure there are a huge number of developers out there that don't understand how useful it can be. It may be nice to explain that this is not only useful to track what version of your stylesheet is in current use, but also as a quick way to update cached stylesheets. I've lost track of the number of times I used to scratch my head and find myself refreshing the browser and clearing cache to try and see style changes ;)

[Garowetz]

More explanation of the included javascript code "catch all document.write() calls"

[chuanxshi]

I have added the Version Control with Cachebusting article

http://github.com/paulirish/html5-boilerplate/wiki/Version-Control-with-Cachebusting

[paulirish]

Thx shichuan!

Another one, just asked:

if I don't want to support IE6 and I don't want my sites to be IE6 compatible so I can make them lighter, what parts should I remove?

[paulirish]

... which divya then answered:

The conditional comments around the body (or in the latest builds the html) tag and the conditional include of support for transparent pngs at the bottom should be sufficient in the HTML. In the CSS, just remove all selectors that start with .ie6.

Also I would add you should prompt for chromeframe install in IE6 if you've given up on them.
http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-getting-started#TOC-Detecting-Google-Chrome-Frame-and-P

[paulirish]

A good few of these have been tackled (or started) here:

http://github.com/paulirish/html5-boilerplate/wiki

I'd appreciate any help in fleshing out these and getting these answers above documented. :)

[nimbupani]

I have added all of them into the FAQs section: http://github.com/paulirish/html5-boilerplate/wiki/Faqs

Any more questions should be added there.