State of CSS 2023, Chrome for Testing, Firefox 114, Polypane 14, Vivaldi 6.1, Safari 17 beta, and more | Front End News #099
NOTE: This is issue #099 of my newsletter, which went live on Tuesday, June 20. If you find this information useful and interesting and you want to receive future issues as they are published, ahead of everyone else, I invite you to join the subscriber list at frontendnexus.com.
You are invited to participate in the 2023 edition of the State of CSS Survey. In Browser News, we have the new Chrome for Testing, Firefox 114, Polypane 14, Vivaldi 6.1, and Safari TP 172. We also get a glimpse at the WebKit features that will be included in the upcoming Safari 17 Beta.
We got some big names on the Release Radar this time, such as Angular 16.1, Astro 2.6, Nest v10, Neutralinojs v4.12.0, or the June Security Releases for Node. The package of Front End Resources is also large than usual and includes a bunch of SVG icons and illustrations, a handful of generators, color palettes, gradients, and free food images.
2023 State of CSS Survey
It's that time of the year again when we're invited to participate in the yearly State of CSS survey. The fifth edition is already up and running, and it takes only 10-15 minutes to complete.
💻 Browser news
Chrome
The Chrome team has announced a new flavor of the most used browser. Chrome for Testing is meant purely for browser automation and testing purposes.
Firefox
Firefox 114 rolled out to users. This release brings mostly security fixes and quality-of-life improvements. Developers can now enjoy the CSS Cascading Level 4 supports()
syntax for @import
rules and can use infinity
and NaN
constants inside the CSS calc()
function. Last but not least, the WebTransport API is now enabled by default.
Polypane
Polypane, the browser for ambitious web developers, has released version 14. This update brings Chromium 114, better session management, a faster, refreshed UI, and many more features.
Vivaldi
Vivaldi users received an update for both desktop and mobile versions. The desktop version adds more functionality to Workspaces and Tabs. Both releases include a mechanism to masquerade as competitors to benefit its users (such as accessing the Bing Chat or unlocking graphic driver optimizations meant only for Google Chrome).
WebKit
WWDC23 brought us a preview of the WebKit features that will be included in Safari 17 Beta. Web Apps are finally coming to Mac. Spatial Web will be possible due to integration with the upcoming Vision Pro. There is support for new HTML and CSS features (the popover
attribute, CSS counter styles, more Media Queries Level 4, and more). On the JavaScript side, the new Offscreen Canvas will transfer rendering to a worker context, there's improved storage quota, and a lot more.
Safari Technology Preview 172 is also out and brings a large list of fixes and patches to existing issues.
📡 The Release Radar
Angular 16.1 - The modern web developer’s platform
Astro 2.6 - The all-in-one web framework designed for speed
Bun v0.6.9 - A fast all-in-one JavaScript runtime
Fresh 1.2 - a modern, Deno-first, edge-native full stack web framework
Nest v10 - A progressive Node.js framework for building efficient, scalable, and enterprise-grade server-side applications with TypeScript/JavaScript
Neutralinojs v4.12.0 - Build lightweight cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
Node v20.3.0 (Current), June 20 2023 Security Releases - an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime
polywasm - a polyfill for WebAssembly
Redwood v5.3.0 - The App Framework for Startups
SupportsCSS v0.1.5 - Feature Detection for Modern CSS
TS-Pattern v5.0.0 - The exhaustive Pattern Matching library for TypeScript
Tesseract.js v4.1.0 - Pure Javascript OCR for more than 100 Languages
🛠️ Front End Resources
Badgers - Fast and clean SVG badges for your projects
Branition: Colors - Browse over 300 hand-curated color palettes
Can I DevTools? - it is like @CanIUse but for the browser devtools
Comic Mono - A legible monospace font
DemoCoding: Glassmorphism - CSS Glassmorphism Generator
DemoCoding: Gradients - CSS Gradient Generator
DemoCoding: Neumorphism - CSS Neumorphism Generator
Foodiesfeed - free AI-generated food photos
Iconsans - 320+ Free Icons for your next project
Loaf - Animated SVG icons you'll love to use
SVG Gradients - A collection of multi colour vector gradients
SVG Shapes - 100+ SVGs. No Attribution required
Type Scale - A visual type scale calculator
There's more where that came from. Explore the rest of the Front End Resource collection.
Wrapping things up
Ukraine is still suffering from the Russian invasion - if you are looking for ways to help, please check Smashing Magazine's article We All Are Ukraine 🇺🇦 or get in touch with your trusted charity.
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That's all I have for this issue. Have a great and productive week, keep yourselves safe, spend as much time as possible with your loved ones, and I will see you again next time!