A17 FE Boilerplate

• Wiki https://code.area17.com/a17/fe-boilerplate/wikis/home
• Issues https://code.area17.com/a17/fe-boilerplate/issues

Introduction

Instead of opinionated predesigned components, like those provided in Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation, A17 Boilerplate provides a structure and set of ideas to allow quick and consistent set up of a project. It aims to take away the boring set up of "what folder structure do I use?", "how will I generate my CSS?" and "what grid system will I use?" by providing those things out of the box. But, crucially, it then leaves the fun bit of writing the site styles up to you.

Installation

Via npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@area17/a17-boilerplate

Via a17-generator

Please see instructions here a17-generator.

Manual install

Go to the project root, and run:

$ npm install @area17/a17-boilerplate

After the package is installed please run:

$ npx a17-bp init

Tasks

All available tasks are listed in package.json file as npm tasks and are documented in the Wiki

Supported Browsers

Boilerplate runs mustard test in the head of the document to test for basic browser abilities to determine if the browser is modern or not (see head.js). Modern browsers are currently considered to be:

• IE11+
• Safari 10+
• Edge 12+
• Chrome 24+
• FF 29+

Older browsers will have their JavaScript execution halted and load a fall back HTML4CSS

NB IE11 support will likely be dropped in 2019 with a stricter mustard test.

Currently planned updates

Currently in no particular order, a list of items currently being discussed/planned.

Boilerplate specific

• JavaScript evolution:
  • remove IE11 support Q3 2019
• SCSS evolution:
  • deprecate grid float methods
  • add CSS grid methods
  • define and document nomenclature of components
• Compilation tasks:
  • add critical CSS method
  • purge/purify CSS to remove unused styles
  • modern build (ES2015+ build and ES5 with polyfills)
• Documentation
• dev dependency/dependency - update docs to talk about diff
• Shared 500 pages
• Public release
  • edit documentation, fix gaps

Broader A17 FE

• Integration with BE:
  • refine faker powered static workflow
  • refine FE block repeater
  • image helpers from AIC
• Design to FE workflow
  • refine process
  • edit documentation
  • assess Figma API for tighter integration
• Toolkit
  • asses bitsrc, patternlab, storylab etc.
  • consider extending Twill guides

Update Log

6.2.8

• Updated webpack config to enable overriding of the optimization setting

6.2.7

• Import unit mixins.

6.2.6

• Sass deprecation warning : @elseif is deprecated and will not be supported in future Sass versions. Use "@else if" instead.

6.2.5

• Including dotenv to correctly read .env vars

6.2.4

• A17 Helpers version update

6.2.3

• pixel font sizes are converted to rems - no change to how we spec typography, just on how the CSS presents the numbers

6.2.2

• User Terser instead of Uglify for JS minification. See why : https://github.com/webpack-contrib/uglifyjs-webpack-plugin/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#breaking-changes

6.2.1

• Fix wrong path resolution to default manifest import

6.2.0

• Updated merge between default manifest and custom manifest. At the end, we don't to test if a key from manifest exist inside webpack configuration.
• Fixed console outputs. Now we can see infos from webpack in build mode.
• Added verbose mode: We can configure stats mode from webpack by adding verbose argument in the command npm run build --verbosemode. Webpack will output everything from him and plugins.
• Added default alias @ to frontend.source from manifest.json. We can use this alias inside to import files inside .js or .scss

6.1.5

• BrowserSync config : use env DEV_URL as proxy if exist

6.1.4

• Custom BrowserSync config set in project will replace the default config

6.1.3

• Documentation updates. And re-added id="content" to the <main> element in the sample.html.

6.1.2

• Update documentation

6.1.1

• Update dependencies

6.1.0

• added manageBehaviors and createBehavior with updated dummyBehavior
• moved required polyfills to an included file

manageBehaviors has been migrated to Boilerplate as it was too specific to our method of triggering functions linked to DOM nodes. This version has been updated to use a MutationObserver. Its compatible with existing Boilerplate behaviors (which include a this.init and this.destroy).

createBehavior is new - a new way to create behaviors. Using the this to make your behaviors will give your behavior a few niceties built in:

• access to options set on the container node via this.options
• access to helper functions to getChild and getChildren of the container node
• automatic purging of variables on destroy
• media query scoping, using lifecycle functions enabled and disabled
• lifecycle functions for debounced resized and mediaQueryUpdated for custom actions on those events

See dummyBehavior.js and <div data-behavior="dummyBehavior"> in sample.html to poke through how to make a new behavior using createBehavior

6.0.4

• Removed touch class test from head.js

6.0.3

• Adding CustomEvent polyfill to app.js as corresponding helper is going to be deprecated

6.0.2

• Update documentation

6.0.1

• Update documentation

6.0.0 Breaking change

There are the following tasks only now.

• icons : generate icon sprite
• bundle : webpack
• rev : revision assets
• dev : perform 'icons' then 'watch'
• watch : bundle in watch mode and watch for icon change
• build : 'icons' then 'bundle' then 'rev'

This update bring numerous changes :

• No more "styles" or "scripts" tasks : those tasks have been replaced by a task named "bundle"
• No more "clean" task : this is done in the main "bundle" task
• No more "fonts" and "images" tasks to copy the images folder and the fonts folder : this is done in the main "bundle" task
• Style is compiled using webpack with the dart-sass implementation
• Webpack config can be tweak in the project itself (by creating the following files : webpack.dev.js / webpack.prod.js / webpack.all.js at the root of the project)
• BrowserSync is now performed using the webpack BrowserSync plugin : you can easily override the default config by using a custom config in a project webpack.bs.js file).

The watch task has been simplified. This is only watching for SVG to re-create the icon sprite.

This create quite some changes in the final dist folder : CSS and JS are now created at the root of the dist folder. One important limitation from Webpack : CSS and JS can't have the same name (ie : app.css and app.js are prohibited).

The rev-manifest.json is still created so Laravel can still use it.

5.0.5

• removing uneeded console.log polyfill
• adding NodeList forEach polyfill (corresponding helper is going to be deprecated)
• adding supported browser notes to readme

5.0.4

• headjs updates:
  • update mustard test to reflect current SOWs
    • IE11+, Safari 10+, Edge, recent Chrome, recent FF https://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+10,ie+11,safari+9,safari+10.1&compare_cats=JS,JS%20API
  • conditionally include picturefill via feature detection as only IE11 needs it
  • removed touch device testing (bad practice)

5.0.3

• Update dependencies (Webpack and Babel)

5.0.2

• Update dependencies

5.0.1

• New manifest.json updates to pass through ports to BrowserSync:

  {
    "config": {
      "browsersyncPort": 1312,
      "browsersyncUiPort": 1313
    }
  }

5.0.0

• Added new type styles handing with baseline-baseline fixing and margin functions to space baseline-baseline. See ttps://codepen.io/13twelve/pen/WYgrYE?editors=1000

4.1.2

• Update Webpack to latest version and remove hardcoded 'frontend' folder in watch task. (There are still some hardcoded 'frontend' to be removed)

4.1.1

• Updated breakpoint mixin to help generate IE11 and hover based breakpoints

  @include breakpoint('medium+') {
    // styles to be given to browsers at `medium` and above
  }
  @include breakpoint(null,'hover') {
    // styles to be given to devices with mouse pointers
  }
  @include breakpoint(null,'ie11') {
    // styles to be given to be given to IE11
  }
  @include breakpoint('medium+','hover') {
    // styles to be given to browsers at `medium` and above that have mouse pointers
  }
  @include breakpoint('medium+','ie11') {
    // styles to be given to ie11 at `medium` and above
  }

4.1.0

• Add a way to specify custom entry points in the webpack config via the manifest :

  "scripts": {
    "app.js": "js/app.js",
    "map.js": "js/map.js",
    "head.js": "js/head.js"
  }

  If no "scripts" are found it will fallback on the js/app.js and the js/head.js file.

4.0.1

• Update node-sass so this support Node v11

4.0.0

• Webpack 4 is now used to generate JS

3.2.1

• Rev asset task: add a way to pass files into rev task (in addition to default .css and .js files)

3.2.0

• Update Babel version to 7.x.x.

3.1.1

• Update dependencies.

3.1

• Update dependencies.

3.0.3

• Fix a manifest file path bug.

3.0.2

• Prevent svgo from removing viewBox attribute from svgs.

3.0.1

• Exclude a17-helpers package from being compiled by babel (needs to install latest a17-helpers package which is compiled already).

3.0.0-rc.7

• Remove babel-polyfill from app.js by default

3.0.0-rc.6

• Webpack config update

3.0.0-rc.5

• Scripts and Watch tasks must be plugged to the dist folder config via the manifest
• Fonts and Images tasks : empty the folder before copying
• Remove unused packages

3.0.0-rc.4

• Update icon task so ids of the svg symbols are prefixed with icon--.

3.0.0-rc.3

• Add non-frontend file watch support. In manifest.json, just add bs options to config like the following example (it is using relative path to the root of frontend folder):

  {
    "config": {
      "bs" : {
        "watchExtra" : [
          "./*.php"
        ]
      }
    }
  }

3.0.0-rc.2

• Fix warning in Sass, typography mixin : "&&" means two copies of the parent selector. You probably want to use "and" instead.

3.0.0-rc.1

• Safely update packages
• Watch images

3.0.0-beta.8

• Clean dist folder before doing a build

• Add the rev task : a rev-manifest.json file will be added at the root of the dist folder to map assets with revisioned ones

• In dev the rev-manifest.json will look like this npm run build :

  {
    "styles/app.css":"styles/app.css",
    "styles/html4css.css":"styles/html4css.css",
    "scripts/app.js":"scripts/app.js",
    "scripts/head.js":"scripts/head.js"
  }

• In production npm run prod :

  {
    "styles/app.css":"styles/app-7ad77318e2.css",
    "styles/html4css.css":"styles/html4css-894eb0106a.css",
    "scripts/app.js":"scripts/app-e82b5c7421.js",
    "scripts/head.js":"scripts/head-b39adeb404.js"
  }

3.0.0-beta.7

• Add script source map

3.0.0-beta.6

• Refactor icon task so it is only using svg-store and svgo (it remove the phantomjs dependency)

3.0.0-beta.5

• Add sass source map

3.0.0-beta.4

• Use Webpack to watch scripts (other files are still watchting via package watch)

3.0.0-beta.3

• Add icon watch and revise some readme info.

3.0.0-beta.2

• Updated some instructions

3.0.0-beta.1

• The bp 3.0

Publish

For publishing to npm, please see this guide.