Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/06/17/visual_studio_html5_update/

Visual Studio infected with HTML5 by 'rogue faction'

Passion in action

By Gavin Clarke

Posted in OSes, 17th June 2011 23:57 GMT

There's nothing to stop you working with HTML5 in Visual Studio. Except for the fact that you can't use many of the features that polish the .NET-editing experience.

That wasn't a problem for Microsoft until it decided HTML5 was the future of coding on PCs, devices, and the web, unveiling a very Web- and HTML-centric next version of Windows.

Eyes have been turning slowly to the next of Visual Studio, to see how Microsoft's tooling story plays out.

Ahead of that, Microsoft engineers have updated the existing version of the company's IDE to make HTML5 programming for the Windows faithful a friendlier experience.

Described by Microsoft principal manager Scott Hanselman jokingly, he tells us via Twitter, as a "rogue faction" inside Microsoft's server and tools unit, the group has built an update to Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 they claim brings HTLM5 support up-to-date, adds support for CSS 3, and brings more new API's to IntelliSense for JavaScript.

The release is described as the work of "passionate people done in their spare time" rather than an official Microsoft product release.

The plan is to provide an update roughly every three months and to keep Visual Studio up-to-date with any changes made to the HTML5 spec by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

We'll keep watching to see what's coming from the full Visual Studio team in the next edition. ®