Jan 28, 2011 14:26 GMT  ·  By

One reason, if you need it, to take the first upgrade for Visual Studio 2010 out for a spin is the love that Service Pack 1 shows for HTML5 and CSS3.

Essentially, with the advent of Visual Studio 2010 SP1, Microsoft plans to simplify the work needed from developers to build web applications on top of ASP.NET by leveraging technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3.

With Internet Explorer 9 getting closer and closer to the RTW (release to web) milestone, the software giant has been little shy in telling devs that the time to start putting together web experiences using HTML5 and CSS3 is now.

With releases such as Visual Studio 2010, the company is making it easier for them to do so, although, there are caveats that they need to be well aware of.

The most important is the fact that full support is not provided for either HTML5 or CSS3, not that Microsoft could have done it, even if it tried.

“Visual Studio 2010 was originally released without HTML5 support, so does SP1 finally add support for it? Yes, to some extent,” revealed a member of the Microsoft Visual Web Developer team.

“The entire HTML5 specification isn’t supported but most of the new elements and attributes are. That means you get both intellisense and validation for HTML5 with SP1.

“In SP1 there are a few improvements in the CSS3 support as well, though not as elaborate as with HTML5. The editor now supports the more advanced selectors such as div:nth-child(2n+1) without giving validation errors and the new color values rgba, hsl, hsla and 8 digit hex values are also supported.”

Despite this, Microsoft insists that devs should not linger in embracing the new technologies.

And fact is that with all modern browsers, including IE9 featuring support for HTML5 and CSS3 and even aiming for synchronizing the implementations so that devs can write code only once, now it’s the best time to start leveraging the technologies.

“We encourage all ASP.NET developers to start taking advantage of what HTML5 and CSS3 has to offer already today. The Web Platform and Tools team takes web standards very seriously and you will see much better support for HTML5 and CSS3 in the future,” Microsoft added.

Visual Studio 2010 Premium is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Professional is available for download
here.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate is available for download
here.
Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 is available for download
here.

.NET Framework 4 RTM is available for download here.