A modern Web starter kit for projects

Overview

Web Starter Kit is an opinionated boilerplate for web development. Tools for building a great experience across many devices. A solid starting point for both professionals and newcomers to the industry.

Table of Contents

1. Browser Support
2. Features
3. Install
4. Quickstart
5. Commands
6. Structure
7. JS
8. SCSS
9. Tasks
10. Troubleshooting
11. Contributing
12. License

Browser Support

At present, we officially aim to support the last two versions of the following browsers:

• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• Safari
• Internet Explorer

This is not to say that Web Starter Kit cannot be used in browsers older than those reflected, but merely that our focus will be on ensuring our layouts work great in the above.

Features

Feature	Summary
Easy start	We don't use responsive boilerplate. You are free to make your own decision in what way to make responsive for the site. Just start with index.html.
Sass support	Compile Sass into CSS with ease, bringing support for variables, mixins and more (Run gulp for project compiling). In our WSK we follow Sass guidelines.
Performance optimization	Minify and concatenate JavaScript, CSS, HTML and images to help keep your pages lean (Run gulp to create an optimised version of your project to /assets).
Code Hinting	JavaScript code hinting is done using JsHint - a hinter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. HTML code hinting is done using HtmlHint.
ES2015(ES6) Support	Optional ES2015 support .You can use all kind of ES6 features here. ES2015 source code will be automatically transpiled to ES5 for wide browser support.
Built-in HTTP Server	A built-in server for previewing your site locally while you develop and iterate.
Live Browser Reloading	Reload the browser in real-time anytime an edit is made without the need for an extension (Run gulp and edit your files).
Cross-device Synchronization	Synchronize clicks, scrolls, forms and live-reload across multiple devices as you edit your project. Powered by BrowserSync (Run gulp and open up the IP provided on other devices on your network).

Quickstart

Init your project using jcn or Download the kit from this repository and build on what is included in the assets directory.

You can start from index.html - the default starting point, with template text.

Be sure to look over the installation to verify your environment is prepared to run Web Starter Kit. Once you have verified that your system can run WSK, check out the commands available to get started.

Install

Init your project using jcn or directly Download WSK and run $ npm install --global gulp@next && npm install in that directory to get started.

To take advantage of Web Starter Kit you need to:

1. Download the code.
2. Install all necessary dependencies if you don't already have them.
3. Modify the application as you wish.
4. Make the production of your code.

Getting the code

Download and extract WSK to the place where you want to work.

Prerequisites

Node.js

Bring up a terminal and type node --version. Node should respond with a version at or above 6.0.x. If you need to install Node, go to nodejs.org and click on the big green Install button.

Gulp

Bring up a terminal and type gulp --version. If Gulp is installed it should return a version number at or above 4.0.x. If you need to install/upgrade Gulp, open up a terminal and type in the following:

$ npm install --global gulp

This will install Gulp globally. Depending on your user account, you may need to configure your system to install packages globally without administrative privileges.

Local dependencies

Next, install the local dependencies Web Starter Kit requires:

$ npm install

That's it! You should now have everything needed to use the Web Starter Kit.

You may also want to get used to some of the commands available.

Commands

There are many commands available to help you build and test sites. Here are a few highlights to get started with.

Watch For Changes & Automatically Refresh Across Devices

Build & Optimize

$ gulp

Build and optimize the current project, ready for deployment. This includes linting as well as image, script, stylesheet and HTML optimization and minification. Also, a browsersync script will be automatically generated, which will take care of precaching your sites' resources.

$ gulp dev

Same as 'gulp' command but without starting the local server.

Serve the Fully Built & Optimized Site

$ gulp production

gulp production task creates the production/ folder in the root of the project with assets files only. It will help you to create clear instances of code for the production or further implementation.

Structure

Your folder structure for WSK: If you want to use our WSK , you need to know something about the structure.

├── assets          #Folder with files after compiling
├── src             #Folder with sources
├── tasks           #Folder with tasks for gulpfile
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── gulp-config.js  #Config for gulp
├── gulpfile.js     #File with gulp tasks
├── index.html      #Main application
└── package.json    #File with dependencies

Tasks - folder for gulpfile tasks. In package.json you can find all the dependencies. In src folder you can find all sources for the project (images, sass , javascript files).

src folder structure

├── images                      #Folder for storing images
├── js                          #Folder for storing js files
   ├── modules                  #Folder for storing js modules
   ├── app.js                   #Main js file
├── scss
   ├── abstracts                #Folder for storing scss files
      ├── _functions.scss       #Sass functions
      ├── _helpers.scss         #Sass helpers
      ├── _mixins.scss          #Sass mixins
      ├── _variables.scss       #Sass variables that we can use in our scss files
   ├── base                     #Folder for storing base styles
      ├── _forms.scss           #Sass styles for forms      
      ├── _main.scss            #Main scss file for base styles      
      ├── _reset.scss           #Sass reset
      ├── _typography.scss      #Sass styles for text      
   ├── components               #Global Reusable Presentational Components
   ├── layout                   #Global layout
   ├── pages                    #Global styles for pages
   ├── style.scss               #Main scss file (can be used for importing another files)
#This `templates` folder will be created if you choose a Pug option using jcn
├── templates                   #Folder with pug templates
   ├── layouts                  #Folder with pug layouts
      ├── default.pug           #Example of the pug layout
   ├── mixins                   #Folder with pug mixins
      ├── article.pug           #Example of the pug mixin
   ├── views                    #Folder with pug pages
      ├── blog.pug              #Example of a blog page
      ├── index.pug             #Example of a index page
├── vendor_entries              #Folder for vendor entries(plugins)
  ├── vendor.js                 #File for plugins js 
  ├── vendor.scss               #File for plugins styles

Use images folder to add your graphic files, modules to add your javascript modules (don't forget to include it in app.js), scss folder to add your styles for the project. You can create, delete files and folders in scss, but don't forget to include them in style.scss file .

Use vendor_entries to include plugins into your project.

JS

In our WSK you can use ES2015(ES6). ES2015 isn't introducing anything other than improvements to the JavaScript language and a few new features.

It is not an alternative syntax or language like CoffeeScript or TypeScript. It's good ol' fashioned JavaScript. The reason so many people are excited is that this version introduces a lot of much-needed improvements to the language.

• All custom javascript files are located in js/ folder;
• Entry point for javascript is src/js/app.js you can import all your .js files from here using ES6 import feature;
• All javascript is babelified so yes! You can use all kind of ES6 features here.
• All extensions must be installed by the NPM;
• After installing the extension you must include its files:
  • js files must be included in src/vendor_entries/vendor.js by adding new elements to the array.

SCSS

In our WSK you can use SASS. Sass is the most mature, stable, and powerful professional grade CSS extension language in the world.

Sass is a CSS preprocessor — a layer between the stylesheets you author and the .css files you serve to the browser. Sass (short for Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets) plugs the holes in CSS as a language, allowing you to write DRY code that’ll be faster, more efficient, and easier to maintain. In our WSK we follow Sass guidelines.

So while normal CSS doesn’t yet allow things like variables, mixins (reusable blocks of styles), and other goodies, Sass provides a syntax that does all of that and more—enabling “super functionality” in addition to your normal CSS.

• All custom scss files locate in src/scss/ folder;
• Entry point for all scss is src/scss/style.scss you can import all your .scss files from here;
• You don't need to write prefixes for different browsers like -webkit it will be done by the gulp.

The src directory above contains MDL's Sass files and the JavaScript sources for all MDL components.

• All extensions must be installed by the NPM;
• After installing the extension you must include its files:
  • css or sass files must be included in src/vendor_entries/vendor.scss using @import.

You are able to add your own custom sass files and optionally disable/enable gulp-group-css-media-queries module. You can see this property in the gulp-config.js file:

Please don't forget to link all your custom scss files in html:

Also, you might want to add these sass files to the ignore list (check getPathesToCopyForProduction and getPathesToCopy properties in the gulp-config.js file). By default they will be copied to the assets and production folders.

Tasks

Task	Description
browser-sync-server	Browsersync can watch your files as you work. Changes you make will either be injected into the page (CSS & images) or will cause all browsers to do a full-page refresh.
build-custom-js	Compiles all custom js from src/js.
build-js-vendors	minifies and сompiles all vendor js from src/vendor_entries.
build-sass-production	Compiles and minifies all custom scss from src/scss to production folder.
build-sass	Compiles all custom scss from src/scss to assets/css folder.
build-styles-vendors	Compiles and minifies all plugins scss from src/vendor_entries to production folder.
clean-production	production folder removing.
copy-folders	Need to copy all folders from sources to assets.
templates	Compiles all pug files into html files.
html-hint	Need to hint html files.
js-hint	Need to hint js files.
image-clean	Removing images.
image-min	We use this to minify images.
watch	Task for watching all the changes.
compile-sass-files	Compiles all custom scss files listed in the gulp-config.js to assets/css folder

Troubleshooting

If you find yourself running into issues during installation or running the tools, please check our Troubleshooting guide and then open an issue. We would be happy to discuss how they can be solved.

Contributing

Contributions, questions and comments are all welcome and encouraged. For code contributions to Web Starter Kit, please see our Contribution guide before submitting a pull request. Website related issues should be filed on the Web Fundamentals issue tracker.

License

The MIT License (MIT).

Copyright (c) 2018 JustCoded the IP provided on other devices on your network.