Mobile Boilerplate homepage | Documentation table of contents
Allows you to more easily explicitly add custom styles when JavaScript is
disabled (no-js) or enabled (js). More here: Avoiding the
FOUC.
As recommended by the HTML5 spec (4.2.5.5 Specifying the document's character encoding), add your charset declaration early (before any ASCII art ;) to avoid a potential encoding-related security issue in IE. It should come in the first 1024 bytes.
The charset should also come before the <title> tag, due to potential XSS
vectors.
The meta tag for compatibility mode needs to be before all elements except title and meta. And that same meta tag can only be invoked for Google Chrome Frame if it is within the first 1024 bytes.
<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True">The HandheldFriendly meta-tag was used initially by older Palm and Blackberry models as well as browsers like AvantGo.
<meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320"/>Microsoft introduced the MobileOptimized tag for the PocketPC.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">This is more widely supported by modern smartphones, including but not limited to: iOS, Android, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7.
There are a few different options that you can use with the viewport meta
tag. You can find out more in the
Apple developer docs. HTML5 Mobile Boilerplate comes with
a simple setup that strikes a good balance for general use cases.
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="img/touch/apple-touch-icon-144x144-precomposed.png">For the third generation iPad with high-resolution Retina Display
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="img/h/apple-touch-icon.png">For the iPhone 4 with high-resolution Retina Display
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="img/m/apple-touch-icon.png">For the first-generation iPad
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="img/l/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png">For non-Retina iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android 2.1+ devices
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="img/l/apple-touch-icon.png">For a comprehensive overview, please read Everything you always wanted to know about touch icons by Mathias Bynens.
For Nokia devices
<meta http-equiv="cleartype" content="on">Mobile Internet Explorer allows us to activate ClearType technology for smoothing fonts for easy reading
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">Makes the web page run in full screen mode when launched from the home screen icon; also hides the address bar and component bar at the top and bottom of the browser.
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent">Styles the bar at the top of the browser
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" >Websites with separate URLs for desktop and mobile websites need to have a canonical link on mobile site pointing back to the desktop version for SEO. More information on Google Webmaster Docs.
<!-- more tags for your 'head' to consider https://gist.github.com/849231 -->Other tags that can be used in the head section
HTML5 Mobile Boilerplate uses a custom build of Modernizr.
Modernizr is a JavaScript library which adds classes to
the html element based on the results of feature test and which ensures that
all browsers can make use of HTML5 elements (as it includes the HTML5 Shiv).
This allows you to target parts of your CSS and JavaScript based on the
features supported by a browser.
In general, in order to keep page load times to a minimum, it's best to call any JavaScript at the end of the page because if a script is slow to load from an external server it may cause the whole page to hang. That said, the Modernizr script needs to run before the browser begins rendering the page, so that browsers lacking support for some of the new HTML5 elements are able to handle them properly. Therefore the Modernizr script is the only JavaScript file synchronously loaded at the top of the document.
The central part of the boilerplate template is pretty much empty. This is intentional, in order to make the boilerplate suitable for both web page and web app development.
HTML5 Mobile Boilerplate comes with the latest version of jQuery.
Finally, an optimized version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code is included. Google recommends that this script be placed at the top of the page. Factors to consider: if you place this script at the top of the page, you’ll be able to count users who don’t fully load the page, and you’ll incur the max number of simultaneous connections of the browser.
Further information: