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

Welcome to the primary ever What’s !essential, a roundup of one of the best CSS and internet improvement information from the final two weeks. When 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,
fascinating bulletins and quick-read hyperlinks that we shared,
one of the best of what Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have just lately shipped,
and extra, in all probability.

Let’s dig in!

HTMHell Creation Calendar 2025

Manuel Matuzović has created this gorgeous hellish (all in good enjoyable) HTMHell Creation Calendar 2025 made up of 24 HTML-focused articles — mainly, there’s one on daily basis till Christmas Day. Clearly, we’re already 16 unbelievable 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, despite the fact that 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 typically spotlight when taking you to an internet web page, however we are able to truly spotlight textual content ourselves when sending hyperlinks to different folks. ::target-text selects this textual content in order that we are able to fashion it, and it’s supported by all internet browsers — who knew?

Cease utilizing JavaScript to resolve 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 need 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’ve got granular management over hyphenation

@eva.city over at Bluesky mentioned 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 assist) permits us to specify the popular minimal variety of characters on both aspect of the hyphen, which is sweet sufficient, I suppose?

Which shade format ought to we be utilizing?

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

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

CSS Wrapped 2025 and State of HTML 2025

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

Cool conversations, enjoyable demos, and new browser options

In case you missed any of our Fast Hits, listed here are the most recent 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 a minimum of it’ll as soon as it leverages CSS Colour 6)
- text-decoration-inset, which permits 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 yr)
- @custom-media, which is mainly {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 assist now).
- field-sizing permits adaptive sizing for enter fields (once more, hurry up Firefox).
- command and commandfor, now baseline and my choose for finest HTML function of the yr, 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 in a position to set cursor on pseudo-elements resembling ::earlier than and ::after, however fortunately we are able to now!