It was just last week that Apple relented on its ban of ported Flash applications for iOS devices, but unsurprisingly, Adobe is still toddling along with its piecemeal rollout of HTML5 support in its Creative Suite 5 applications. The HTML5 pack for Dreamweaver became an official update patch at the end of August, and now the company is following up with an informal update for Illustrator CS5. Adobe refused to call it a beta, but neither is it a final version; it's a "compatibility update and will not roll out through the normal update process, and will change as standards change and users provide feedback," according to David Macy, Senior Product Manager for Illustrator. For now, it's a free download from Adobe Labs. The pack includes support for CSS3 and canvas tags, and expands SVG export capabilities.
One of the key new features is the integration between artboards and both CSS and SVG (scalable vector graphics). In the SVG export dialog, you can have it save each artboard as a separate file, with concurrently generated CSS media queries for each. In addition, the program can generate CSS directly from the Character Styles and Appearance panels; so for example, with properly structured layers in your illustration, you could export the layout and style (such as gradients or drop shadows) CSS code separately. You'll also be able to turn graphics into new Canvas objects (though you still have to manually code the linked Javascript), and export variable-driven SVG objects.
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