Today the Web Platform and Tools team (I can see the influence of Mads in this) announced the release of the Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1.
What sits behind this cryptic name? Shouldn’t Visual Studio already support web standards? Actually, not the latest ones.
In January Microsoft released the support for HTML5 in the context of intellisense and validation in VS2010 SP1, but all the other related standards, CSS3 and all the new JavaScript standards were left out of the update.
With this package you will have CSS3 schema support, intellisense for the new “HTML5” API such as geolocation and storage. And enhanced HTML5 support as well (Microdata, WAI-ARIA and fixed support for video tags).
For a more in-depth overview of the release here are some links I recommend you to read:
- Web Standards Update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1, the official announcement from the team
- Announcing the Web Standards Update - HTML5 Support for the Visual Studio 2010 Editor, a comprehensive walkthrough from Scott Hanselman of all the features included in the update
- Web Standards Update - behind the scenes, more insiders info from Mads Kristensen, the PM of the HTML5 support in VS
- The official download page for the Web Standards Update on Visual Studio Gallery
One nice thing about that packages is that it will be updated about every 3 months to keep it in line with the changes in the standards made by the W3C.
Now, together with the great HTML5 template in ASP.NET MVC, you have no more excuses for not building your sites in HTML5.