What’s !necessary #1: Creation Calendars, CSS Wrapped, Internet Platform Updates, and Extra

Welcome to the primary ever What’s !necessary, a roundup of one of the best CSS and internet growth information from the final two weeks. In the event you’re pressed for time (who isn’t?) otherwise you simply can’t stand lacking out on something CSS-related, that is the place to recap:

• one of the best CSS/internet dev articles from across the internet,
• attention-grabbing bulletins and quick-read hyperlinks that we shared,
• one of the best of what Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have lately shipped,
• and extra, most likely.

Let’s dig in!

HTMHell Creation Calendar 2025

Manuel Matuzović has created this beautiful hellish (all in good enjoyable) HTMHell Creation Calendar 2025 made up of 24 HTML-focused articles — principally, there’s one daily till Christmas Day. Clearly, we’re already 16 improbable articles in, so that you’re in for an actual deal with with 8 extra articles to come back. The spotlight for me to this point is the article on Invoker Instructions, which as of this week are supported in all internet browsers, so it’s a double win!

WebKit flags ::target-text

WebKit did slightly write-up on ::target-text. And I’m glad they did as a result of I had by no means heard of it, though Sunkanmi has a wonderful write-up on it right here at CSS-Tips as effectively. Goal textual content is the textual content that search engines like google generally spotlight when taking you to an internet web page, however we are able to really spotlight textual content ourselves when sending hyperlinks to different folks. ::target-text selects this textual content in order that we are able to type it, and it’s supported by all internet browsers — who knew?

Cease utilizing JavaScript to unravel CSS issues

Chizaram Ken walks us by way of the newest CSS tips that we are able to carry out to scale back our reliance on JavaScript, and why we’d wish to do this. With CSS rising quicker than it’s ever grown earlier than, I feel we’ll be seeing much more of those articles.

We have now granular management over hyphenation

@eva.city over at Bluesky stated that it’d be good to have the ability to set hyphenation guidelines stopping phrases like “lighter” from hyphenating as “light-er” — however @knowler.dev identified that we are able to, form of. The hyphenate-limit-chars property (nonetheless ready for Safari help) allows us to specify the popular minimal variety of characters on both aspect of the hyphen, which is nice sufficient, I suppose?

Which shade format ought to we be utilizing?

@nadyavoynich.com requested this query, however actually I nonetheless don’t know.

Some superb factors have been made about human-readable codecs and shade depth, and I’ve sort of settled on oklch(). However some UI design instruments don’t even help HSL, so?

CSS Wrapped 2025 and State of HTML 2025

It’s that point of the 12 months. We’ve had Spotify’s Wrapped, PlayStation’s Wrap-Up, Duolingo’s 12 months-in-Overview — now it’s time for CSS Wrapped 2025, the entire newest and biggest issues that Chrome did with CSS (and HTML) this 12 months, and State of HTML 2025, which is about HTML typically.

Cool conversations, enjoyable demos, and new browser options

In case you missed any of our Fast Hits, listed below are the newest CSS/internet dev bulletins and hyperlinks that we’ve shared:

Lastly, our high picks for one of the best CSS and HTML options shipped by internet browsers within the final couple of weeks:

• Chrome 143
• Firefox 146
  • contrast-color(), which ensures optimum shade distinction between two colours (or at the very least it’s going to as soon as it leverages CSS Shade 6)
  • text-decoration-inset, which allows management over the place and dimension of textual content decorations
  • @scope, which makes defining new CSS scoping contexts a baseline function (this, frankly, is the spotlight of my 12 months)
  • @custom-media, which is principally {custom} properties however for media queries, is being trialed
• Safari 26.2
  • random() generates a random quantity in CSS, however sadly it’s not supported anyplace else but.
  • sibling-index() and sibling-count() get the place and variety of siblings respectively (we’re solely ready for Firefox help now).
  • field-sizing allows adaptive sizing for enter fields (once more, hurry up Firefox).
  • command and commandfor, now baseline and my decide for greatest HTML function of the 12 months, are HTML attributes for invoking sure JavaScript occasions declaratively.
  • hidden=until-found, additionally baseline now, for hiding parts till discovered by find-in-page.
  • Additionally, we’ve by no means been capable of set cursor on pseudo-elements reminiscent of ::earlier than and ::after, however fortunately we are able to now!

Bear in mind, you may catch us once more in two weeks — blissful holidays!