I often like to start my projects from scratch and stray away from using frameworks. HTML5 Boilerplate is a really great resource for creating a style-agnostic web project foundation; all your bases will be covered. However, it's much more than I need for a standard project, and I'd waste more time deleting what I don't need than I'd save for the convenience.
A minimal index.html file should always contain a few things, though.
Declare the document type
<!doctype html>- HTML5.
Define the character coding
<meta charset="utf-8">- UTF8.
Define the width of the viewport
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">Optimize for mobile and prevent zoom/horizontal scroll.
Make browsers render elements consistently with a CSS reset.
- Normalize.css is a good option.
Include links to Custom CSS and JavaScript
css/style.cssandjs/scripts.jsare acceptable paths.
Use the latest Internet Explorer rendering mode (optional)
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">- Not mandatory, but might be helpful.
Basic index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<title></title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css" />
<link rel="icon" href="images/favicon.png" />
</head>
<body>
<script src="js/scripts.js"></script>
</body>
</html>