Add HTML5 support to Expression Web 4!

With Internet Explorer 9 Beta’s deep support for HTML 5 and the increasing adoption of HTML5 for RIAs, the Expression Web team is extremely excited to release our free HTML 5 Add-in for Expression Web 4! The HTML5 Schema Configuration Add-In for Expression Web enables the new HTML5 schema to check your markup for errors and provide IntelliSense for HTML5 tags, attributes and values in code view.

Install the HTML5 Schema Configuration Add-In

  1. Quit Expression Web 4 if it is open.

  2. Download the HTML 5 Schema Configuration Add-In here and save it to your local computer.

  3. Start Expression Web 4.

  4. Choose Tools > Add-Ins .. to display the Manage Add-Ins dialog box.

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  5. In the Manage Add-Ins dialog box, click the Install.. button.

  6. In the Open Expression Web Add-in File dialog box, select the HTML5Schema.xadd add-in file you downloaded, and click Open. Be sure to click “Yes” when Expression Web asks you to enable the add-in.

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If the add-in is correctly installed, it will appear in the Manage Add-In dialog, and the Standard toolbar will display a new “HTML5” button.

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Using the HTML5 Schema Configuration Add-In

  1. Start Expression Web 4 with administrative privileges (Right-Click the start icon and select“Run as Administrator”).

  2. Click the HTML5 button in the standard toolbar. The Configure HTML 5 Schemas dialog box lets you enable or disable the new HTML5 schema.

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  3. Click the Enable HTML 5 button to update the Expression Web HTML 5 schemas. Click the X in the upper right corner of the dialog box to close it.

  4. Restart Expression Web 4.

  5. Change your editor options by choosing Tools > Page Editor Options. On the Authoring tab, set both the Document Type Declaration option and Secondary Schema options to HTML5.

If you set your Doctype and Secondary Schema options to HTML5 in the Page Editor Options, then whenever you create a new web page in Expression Web, the new page contains the HTML5 doctype:

<!DOCTYPE html>

If you don’t change the default doctype to HTML5 in the Page Editor Options, you can still create a new HTML5 page by hand in the Code view of a page or open existing HTML5 documents and edit them in Expression Web 4.

Either way, when you edit an HTML5 document in code view, Expression Web 4 now provides IntelliSense for HTML 5 elements, attributes and their values.

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The Expression Web team is very excited about the the new generation of great web applications built on HTML 5 and is happy to support you with this free add-in for HTML5!

Known Issues

  • If you uninstall this add-In from Expression Web, files are left behind and will cause subsequent installations of the Add-In to break. The work-around is simple: Delete any HTML5Schema folders in your %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Expression\Web 4\Addins directory. Then re-install the Add-In.
  • The current SVG schema is provided by the add-in, however, SVG markup is incorrectly flagged as invalid by Expression Web 4. The work-around is to use an online code validator, such as provided by the W3C. 
  • Expression Web 4 sometimes flags closing HTML 5 tags as mismatched tags even though the markup is valid. The work-around is to use an online code validator, such as provided by the W3C.
  • Enabling or disabling HTML 5 with the Add-in requires Expression Web to be run with administrative privileges.