Following Microsoft’s announcement that Windows 8’ UI will be based on HTML5 and JavaScript, it is no surprise that Visual Studio 2010 has got an update polishing its HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3 support: up-to-date W3C-based intellisense and validation for HTML5 and CSS3, plus Geolocation and DOM storage intellisense.
Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta released in December last year introduced initial support for HTML5 – intellisense and validation - and limited validation for CSS3. The Microsoft Web Platform and Tools team has announced the Web Standards Update for Visual Studio SP1 as a free add-on for VS 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express 2010, bringing HTML5 intellisense and validation updated with the latest W3C specification, updated JavaScript intellisense supporting Geolocation and DOM storage, and comprehensive CSS3 intellisense and validation in sync with the W3C specs. The update is free and can be downloaded from the Visual Studio Gallery.
The HTML5 intellisense includes support for the following features:
- WAI-ARIA – an accessibility standard
- Microdata – semantic markup language
- Fixes for the video and audio tags
- New input types like email, URL, date
- Drag & Drop
- Schema.org
The update brings intellisense for many CSS3 features including Multi-columns, Border-Radius, Animation, Transitions and Transforms. Scott Hanselman’s blog post contains a complete list of features supported.
Regarding JavaScript, the update has intellisense and validation for Geolocation, DOM Storage, both local and session storage, and other web APIs.
A Microsoft blog post draws attention to the fact that validation won’t work perfectly in VS 2010: “Since we don’t make any changes to the running code of Visual Studio, we are not able to change the way CSS, HTML and JavaScript gets parsed and validated. That means that even though we are continuing to bring you updates as the W3C standards changes, we will not be able to get it 100% right in Visual Studio 2010.”
The Web Platform and Tools team plans on releasing such updates regularly, and it is expected Microsoft will speed up the process of creating the best HTML5 tools on the market since it is now clear they are deeply committed to web technologies following the announcement that the next Windows will wear HTML5 clothing.
