I love HTML5 Boilerplate and use it a lot as a basis for web projects. Sometimes however, I find it still does a little bit too much for my needs and I end up removing a lot before I can get started.
Most importantly for me though, it still currently doesn’t support building with Google Closure Compiler which I tend to use both for it’s advanced code optimisations and for coding better Object-Oriented JavaScript (not to mention generating JavaScript documentation from the very same comments I write for the compiler).
So What’s Springboard Then?
Springboard is an ultra minimal JavaScript / CSS and HTML project template (or springboard).
It features a very useful ANT build file which, among other things, can:
- Refactor template files to match your project’s namespace so you’re ready to code in seconds
- Combine JavaScript and CSS libraries to reduce HTTP requests
- Compile JavaScript using the Google Closure Compiler (simple or advanced)
- Minify CSS using the YUI Compressor
- Generate JavaScript documentation using the JSDoc Toolkit
- Sanitize HTML and inject variables at compile time
Also included is a simple JavaScript Model-View-Controller (MVC) template (based on Alex Netkachov’s) which can optionally be used as a basis for your project.
Hopefully No fluff – just the very basics you need to get a project or experiment started.
