There’s a lot of buzz around HTML5 and CSS3, and the web is alive with some very impressive demonstrations of what’s possible using this new standard. While in theory anyone could build such sites using nothing more than a copy of Notepad, in the real world some help from your development tools is a very welcome bonus, and the sort of encouragement most of us need to start developing with a new technology.
I recently noticed an announcement from Adobe that there’s to be a free add-in pack for Dreamweaver that will provide code hinting for HTML5 and CSS3
So it was with great interest that I recently noticed an announcement from Adobe that there’s to be a free add-in pack for Dreamweaver that will provide code hinting for HTML5 and CSS3, as well as some sample HTML5 layouts to get you started. The Live preview feature in Dreamweaver, which uses the WebKit engine to render HTML code correctly, is also being upgraded to enable it to preview HTML5 code.
Having code hinting for the syntax of the new HTML5 tags is only a start, as you still need to know how to put them together so you can produce that amazing website you’ve been dreaming of. Adobe has made a great start by enabling HTML5 support in Dreamweaver as well as including a couple of example stylesheets, and some of the insertable “widgets” that are on the firm’s widget centre are now built with HTML5.
Despite all this, though, I still feel the improvements from CS4 to CS5 don’t really warrant the expensive upgrade cost. Perhaps CS6 might impress more? In the meantime, the best route to a tool for building dynamic web pages may be Microsoft’s Blend, or even a product such as Xara Web Designer (now there’s a thought: an HTML5/CSS3 design tool for less than £40).
As products such as Xara use their own vector format inside the design environment and spit out HTML only at the end when asked to publish the site, then one would imagine it would be fairly easy to make it generate HTML5 code instead. Of course, this is for the future, as not all browsers fully support all the new features of HTML5 and CSS3 yet, with IE9 currently lagging well behind.
Currently the best browser for rendering such code is Apple’s Safari for both the Mac and Windows. There’s an interesting set of tables showing the difference in support for HTML5 and CSS3 between the major browsers at FindMeByIP.
Source: PC Pro
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