Is it possible to implement new standards such as HTML5 in ASP.NET Webforms?

Question

Is it possible (using HTML5 Shiv, for example) to implement HTML5 on a Webforms-based platform? Will ASP.NET Webforms allow the developer to semantically mark up a page using the new HTML5 elements?

Answer 1

I'd say ASP.net MVC is more suited to this type of development but I dont see any overwhelming reasons why you couldn't produce webforms pages using HTML5 as it't for the most part an extension to HTML4.

Probably a lot more hand-coding pages than the RAD drag and drop webforms (unfortunately) encourages.

Answer 2

You can create your own custom controls that will render down to whatever html elements you want..

You can output to the page whatever HTML you want, you just have to control that output. So whereas the standard set of Asp.Net controls will output to normal HTML elements like

<label /> and <input /> etc.. You can do your own implementation quite easily.

Also there is nothing stopping you adding custom classes or html5 css attributes to the rendered HTML of Asp.Net controls, just bear in mind that the HTML5 isn't well supported with actual browser usage yet..