Tools for HTML 5

List of tools for developers of websites and applications based on HTML 5.

Maqeta

Editors

It is not easy to find a decent free editor. Obviously, any text editor allows you to write HTML 5 code. What would be interesting is the WYSIWYG feature like as in Dreamweaver 5 with HTML 5 Pack, which is far from free. Some free tools that present them as wysiwyg are in fact simple text editors that, once downloaded, ask you to buy a plugin for the full display.

We must however follow the Ace editor that is not a final tool to install, but rather a library to make an HTML 5 editor operating as independent software or as a plugin. Ace is used by the JavaScript edition of Advanced Explorer with a custom visual interface.

The version 7 of NetBeans, an IDE for Java, C++ and PHP, now includes HTML 5 document editing.

IBM has launched a project of development environment dedicated to HTML 5, Maqetta. It was also IBM which has already launched the Eclipse project.

IBM launched a project development environment dedicated to HTML 5, Maqetta (image on the right) as it had previously launched the Eclipse project. It is a leading software to visually build HTML interfaces, targeting either the desktop or mobile. In this case it is displayed on a virtual mobile.

Testing tools

HTML 5 test allows to check online your browser compatibility with each HTML 5 feature.

The list of forms on this site allows also to visually verify which HTML 5 tags are supported by the browser on you can verify the support of attributes too.

Converters

Wallaby converts Flash files into HTML. This converter is supplied by the creator of Flash, Adobe.

Swiffy. Proposed by Google, online tool to convert SWF file into HTML 5, SVG and CSS 3, and so get rid of the Flash player.

Games creators on Canvas

Construct 2, the software from Scirra allows to design a game by dragging and dropping using the features of HTML 5.
The concept seems attractive, but it has flaws. There are pauses during the game because of the garbage collector to purge the memory for example. The sound is bad. Hopefully future versions of browsers will make this type of game more playable. Hardware acceleration must be enabled on browsers to get fluidity of display.

See also