Friday, July 3, 2026

Folks, I’m getting super excited about web specs again. Not long ago, it seemed like we making insane progress—especially in the realm of CSS—and then last year I felt like there was a bit of a slowdown. Or maybe that was just the bias of my own personal haze. The vibes, they were less than immaculate.

But now we’re cookin’ with gas, and the browser engines once again got rizz. (I think I just deployed slang 90 years apart in one sentence. Is there an award for that? 😂)

Kicking off our whirlwind tour through today’s links…

Hey, so you wanna keep learning about “vanilla” web tech and how to escape the hell of framework churn? Make sure you don't miss another issue of That HTML Blog:

Speaking of Browser Engines

I have a strong feeling that Servo will be an overnight success years in the making. We’re not quite there yet, but it appears the gains being made on the regular are significant. You might want to consider a bit of manual testing of your own sites in Servo, just to see how much is working (or not).

Here’s the latest rundown of what was added in May:

May in Servo: user scripts, mp4 compat, blackboxing in DevTools, and more! - Servo aims to empower developers with a lightweight, high-performance alternative for embedding web technologies in applications.

Plus seven new commands for execCommand(), and Sanitizer API now experimental.

Container Style Queries and Light/Dark Theming

You gotta love it when a whole bunch of disparate APIs come together to offer a cohesive solution to long-standing problems.

CSS features like contrast-color(), @property, and more all operating in harmony, here in Una Kravets’s tutorial:

una.im | Modern CSS theming with light-dark(), contrast-color(), and style queries

Combine three new CSS features to build fully adaptive themed components.

Take Out the Trash JavaScript!

Look, we’re big fans of JS here at That HTML Blog, truly we are. In fact, this community respects it more than some of the folks out there who blindly mash keys to deploy [insert massive framework here] without understanding the benefits of surgically-deployed “vanilla” JS.

But y’know what’s even better than that? No JS at all! 🤘😎

I bet a lot of this is known to you already, but it’s great to have such a helpful guide all in one place. (Share with your React-pilled buddies, heh heh.)

NoLoJS: Reducing the JS Workload with HTML and CSS - Web Performance Calendar

With web performance, less is typically more: When possible, send less data, make the browser do less. Here are several examples where you can replace common JS patterns with HTML and CSS.

Slash Pages Culture

I don’t know this 100% for sure, but I believe Derek Sivers’ Now page movement has gone on to spur another IndieWeb movement which I have grown to love: Slash Pages.

These are pages you add to your personal website at common slugs like /now (obviously), /about, or /contact. Many conventions have sprung up over recent years, and folks have been documenting them. The coolest thing about slash pages? Anyone can just make a new one and propose it as a thing!

Well…I decided I would do exactly that! Introducing /irl. This is a bit like a Now page but specifically focused on recent events or adventures of interest in meatspace. I never particularly liked the “check-ins” craze of a past mobile era (eww, creepy!), but I do like highlighting fun stuff I’m out there doing from time to time (and not being terminally online).

So here’s my IRL page. (And I’ve already inspired someone else to make one too! Will you be next??)

My Life IRL | Jared White

A Further Smattering of Links

I don’t have too many comments to make on these, so I’ll simply include them in a list. Enjoy!

Border gradient with border-radius

The modern way to add a gradient to borders while having rounder corners

Setting the width of selects to the width of the selected option - Manuel Matuzovic

The field-sizing property allows you to control the sizing behavior of elements with a default preferred size, such as form elements.

Groovy text stickers using clever CSS-fu like strokes and SVG filters (CodePen)

Wire Loop: a very fun HTML game by Keith Cirkel

In-N-Out Animations: View Transitions (Part 3/3)

And that’s all I got folks. See you here again in a timeframe longer than 19 hours and shorter than 579283!

Cheers,
Jared

🤔🌩️ Things that make you think: 💡😃

Where should we focus our energy? [re: improving screen readers]

I don't think it's in bloating assistive tech with AI, but in teaching people how to write inclusively. It's cheaper and more sustainable, but it’s also a more ethical and empathetic path. I highly recommend the book Considerate Content by Rebekah Barry if you want to learn more about making your content accessible.

Empowering humans to communicate in a more accessible way prevents the problem at its source, avoiding the need to rely on expensive, unreliable machines to try and patch it in real-time afterwards.

–Craig Abbott