I encountered HTML5 Boilerplate while trying to fix a compatibility issue in Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Quirks mode. I believe the quirks mode is either a new feature or the default display mode newly enforced in IE9 because I didn't notice this thing before. But the quirks mode breaks my new Vialogues Player in HTML5 mode without giving any error message. A ticket in StackOverflow pointed me to the HTML5 Boilerplate website. And my HTML5 video works fine after I applied the <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1"> meta tag in my page as found in the HTML5 Boilerplate HTML template.

HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional frontend developers's base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-safe site.

Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it's just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed.

HTML5 Boilerplate contains the following major components to ensure maximum horizontal (i.e. cross-browser -- both desktop and mobile) and vertical (i.e. backward) compatibilities for HTML5:

* An HTML template
* Screen and print stylesheets
* Javascript/jQuery template
* 404 page template
* .htaccess server configuration template
* Cross-domain policy (security settings for handling data across multiple domains, as used in web clients such as Adobe Flash) template

... and more. See HTML5 Boilerplate

We should consider adopting components of HTML5 Boilerplate in some of our projects, especially Vialogues and New Learning Times as they use lots of HTML5.