When comparing Webapp generator vs Google's Web Starter Kit, the Slant community recommends Webapp generator for most people. In the question“What are the best boilerplates for modern webapp front-end development?” Webapp generator is ranked 3rd while Google's Web Starter Kit is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Webapp generator is:
Any dependencies in the webapp generated can be automatically resolved, thanks to Web-app-generator's powerful integration with Bower.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Auto resolve dependencies
Any dependencies in the webapp generated can be automatically resolved, thanks to Web-app-generator's powerful integration with Bower.
Pro Image optimizations
Automatic automatic image optimization is a pre-built functionality of the web app generator. So that any sites that are made using this tool are perfectly optimized for performance.
Pro Automatic compilation & linting
As the title suggests, the yeoman watch will auto-compile your JavaScript and Sass scripts for you. Also your code will be run through JsHint (for liniting) to make sure best practices are followed as well.
Pro Built in preview server & live reload
The yeoman watch will compile your source files for you and refresh your page in the browser, as soon as it detects some changes that you've made.
Pro Sass support
Since a lot of web designers these days don't use the plain old CSS, instead they use a CSS pre-processor (like Sass or Less). Thanks to Sass support web designers can easily add GWK to their workflows.
Pro CSS vendor autoprefixing
Starter Kit includes Autoprefixer that takes care of vendor prefixes.
Pro High PageSpeed Insights performance score
Since the base skeleton provided by the Web Starter kit is authored by Google itself, it's pretty much understood that the template is optimized to the max, for performance. If you test a site (on Google PageSpeed Insights) built by the GWK you can be sure that it'll always achieve a very high score.
Pro Responsive
Since most of the websites that are currently being built (or any website that was built after 2012) are responsive, a 'scaffold-ed' website skeleton without any responsiveness would be pretty useless.
Pro Live browser reloading
Helps to build website faster by refreshing the page automatically as you save the source file changes.
Pro Performance optimization
Gulp script includes tools for image optimization, JavaScript & CSS minification & optimization and HTML minification.
Pro Built-in HTTP server
In case you want to try out your shiny new site on your mobile phone or another PC. Just type in the command gulp serve
and load up the provided server address from another device to see how your website looks and performs.
Pro Google-friendly style guide
Pro Includes a gulp build script
If you use the Gulp build system and are familiar with its environment, you can directly use Web Starter Kit's Gulp build script to build your next GWK based project.
Pro BrowserSync for synchronized browser testing
BrowserSync offers a browser live-update solution across multiple devices. And it works with basically every desktop and mobile browser. Even IE7.
Pro Yeoman generator
There's a Yeoman generator for Google's Web Starter Kit available. To install (requires Node, Ruby, Gulp, and Sass):
sudo npm install -g yo generator-web-starter-kit
cd project-root-directory/
yo web-starter-kit
npm install
gulp serve
Cons
Con Default support is for libsass
Webapp generator currently has default support for libsass, which falls behind Sass in features (therefor has some incompatibilities with Sass).
Con Requires Yeoman
Con Deprecated
Visitors to the official docs will see a warning: "Warning: Web Starter Kit is no longer supported."
Con Can't be used with Less
The framework CSS is built on Sass, which adds dependencies to the build chain. There's no option to use Less.