How to convert an existing ASP.NET website to HTML 5

Question

I have a website which created first by Visual Studio 2005, then I convert in to Visual Studio 2008 and currently using Visual Studio 2008. After Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, HTML 5 and CSS 3 seem to be available. I want to convert my website to a VS 2010 website which uses HTML5.

How can this be done?

Is it possible to convert it to an ASP.NET Web Application while I'm porting it from VS2008 to Visual Studio 2010 ?

I know how to convert a website to web application in Visual Studio 2008 but I haven't used Visual Studio 2010 and have no idea about the differences.

Answer 1

As mentioned by smnbss, there is no conversion tool to do this for you. That said, there is intellisense support available for HTML5 and CSS3 in VS 2010 with the new SP1. More info:

http://madskristensen.net/post/HTML5-CSS3-in-Visual-Studio-2010-SP1.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/ranganh/archive/2011/02/07/html5-and-visual-studio-2010.aspx

Its quite possible to do this if you avoid the use of controls that spew out ugly HTML; for example, choose ListViews instead of GridViews.

Also, use the HTML5Boilerplate to assist you with cross-browser consistency.

And here is how to integrate the Boilerplate into an ASP.NET Web Forms project with Nuget (Caveat: this is new and I have not tried it):

http://nuget.org/List/Packages/Html5Boilerplate.WebForm

Before applying HTML5Boilerplate, you need to identify your own priorities as far as your user base is concerned, then determine which mix better suits your situation between:

Progressive Enhancement and Gradual Degradation

Finally, since "mobile" Web usage has surpassed that of desktop browsers for the first time ever, you might want to consider going "Mobile First"

UPDATE:

ASP.NET MVC3 has just been released and includes HTML 5 enabled project templates:

http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc3