We begin this issue with two new surveys from Sacha Greif and Devographics. We got the results for the first State of AI survey, and the State of Dev survey is still running. We continue with the announcements for Interop 2025, together with a couple of reports regarding last year's edition of the initiative.
In Browser News, the Google Chrome team is really stepping up its efforts. The monthly "New to the web platform" releases are accompanied by monthly digests about Baseline and deep dives into specific features. When it comes to releases, we have Chrome 132, 133, 134, and 135, Firefox 134, 135, 136, and 137, Polypane 23 and 24, Vivaldi 7.1 and 7.2, and Safari 18.3 and 18.4.
On the Release Radar, we have major releases from important names such as Electron 34 and 35, Material UI v7, Neutralinojs v6, Tailwind CSS v4, Typescript 5.8, or Vitest 3.0, along with a large number of updates from other popular libraries.
We round this issue up with a large set of Front End Resources, including fonts, icons, illustrations, gradient generators, and many other useful tools and utilities.
State of AI 2025 Results
We are all familiar with Sacha Greif's surveys, such as the State of CSS, the State of JavaScript, or the State of React. We have here the results for the first edition of the State of Web Dev AI survey, which had over 4000 respondents.
ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, and Gemini were the most used AI models. Hallucinations and inaccuracies were the most common complaints. GitHub Copilot was the most used coding assistant. DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion were the most used tools for image generation.
State of Devs 2025
State of Devs is the latest survey from Devographics. Unlike the other surveys, which focus on a programming language or framework, this one focuses on developers themselves and topics such as health, hobbies, careers, and more.
Announcing Interop 2025
Interop, hailed as the web industry's most impactful initiative of the last decade, promises to make waves again with the launch of the 2025 edition. The announcements made by all parties involved mark the beginning of a journey that promises to shape the future of web development.
This year, the focus will be on improving the Core Web Vitals metrics, some CSS and UI features highlighted by the State of CSS 2024 survey, the Web Assembly API, and the removal of the Mutation Events. The entire list of 19 focus points is included in the announcements below, and progress can be tracked on the Interop Dashboard.
- Chrome: Interop 2025: another year of web platform improvements
- Mozilla: Launching Interop 2025
- WebKit: Announcing Interop 2025
- Microsoft Edge and Interop 2025
- Bocoup: Interop 2025 Launch
- Igalia: Interop 2025
- Interop 2025 Dashboard
Looking back at Interop 2024
In this section, we reflect on the achievements and learnings from the 2024 iteration of the Interop initiative, as shared in the after-action reports from the Chrome and WebKit teams.
💻 Browser News
Web Platform Updates
Rachel Andrew provided the usual monthly updates to the web platform. Although they focus mainly on Chrome, they offer a broad view of the industry's advancements month to month.
- New to the web platform in December
- New to the web platform in January
- New to the web platform in February
- New to the web platform in March
But wait! There is more! The Chrome team has also started publishing monthly digests of Baseline updates.
- January 2025 Baseline monthly digest
- February 2025 Baseline monthly digest
- March 2025 Baseline monthly digest
Did I mention that there are many articles focused on specific features?
- Support for CSS and Baseline has shipped in ESLint
- The Popover API is now Baseline Newly available
- CSS scrollbar-gutter and scrollbar-width are Baseline Newly available
There is also a central hub for the status of the entire web platform. You can even filter the features based on the baseline level to which they belong. This portal is a handy tool for deciding on the support level of your website or web app.
Chrome
Chrome 132 brought toggle events for the <dialog>
element, the support for capturing video of a single page component, and File System API for Android and WebView. Developers can now view past chats with Gemini AI, the settings panel has a new look, and there are improvements to the Performance, Animations, and Elements > Styles panels. In contrast, the Performance Insights panel has been deprecated and removed.
Chrome 133 introduces several important CSS improvements: an advanced attr()
function, scroll state container queries, and better control of vertical spacing using the text-box
, text-box-trim
, and text-box-edge
properties.
In DevTools, the AI panel can persist locally in your chat history. The Performance panel continues to receive further improvements. Lighthouse was upgraded to version 12.3.0, and there is a new panel where you can find out "What's New."
Chrome 134 introduces new features to the dialog
element, and the Web Locks API now works on shared storage. In DevTools, the Performance and Elements panels receive updates, along with many other smaller changes.
Chrome 135 enables developers to create carousels powered only by CSS and implements support for the CSS shape
function, along with the new command
and command for
attributes.
In DevTools, we continue to receive updates to the Performance panel, various panels get better empty states, and Lighthouse receives an update to version 12.4.0.
Firefox
Firefox 134 enables touchpad hold gestures on Linux, hardware-accelerated playback of HEVC video content, and various security fixes. Developers have better support for debugging web extensions, while the Network panel displays information about Early Hints.
Firefox 135 brings credit card autofill and integrated AI chatbot access and enforces certificate transparency.
Firefox 136 has an updated sidebar, a vertical tab bar, more options to clear browsing data, several web platform updates, and various security fixes.
Firefox 137 brings tab groups, an updated address bar, and various security fixes. Developers can inspect font metadata and can override network requests with local files.
Polypane
Polypane 23 runs on Chromium 132. Windows users have a distinct dock icon for their undocked panels and devtools. Update 23.1 lets you see which elements have event listeners, while someone can trigger all screenshot features using keyboard shortcuts.
Polypane 24
Polypane 24 brings a new recording feature, a 3D stacking context visualization, tab customization options, and the option to edit HTML while preserving events. Everything now runs on Chromium 136.
One interesting fact is that Polypane has hired Igalia (one of the Interop participants) to improve the emulation of devices in Chromium.
Vivaldi
Vivaldi 7.1 brings a new Weather widget, more dashboard customization options, the ability to import open tabs when migrating from another browser, and the ability to share a tab with any of your other Vivaldi-running devices.
- Vivaldi 7.1: Widgets, Tabs, and sleek start to 2025
- Vivaldi 7.1 for Android: Your Browsing, Smarter and Simpler
- Vivaldi 7.1 for iOS: Smarter, Faster, and More Personal Browsing
Vivaldi 7.2 brings faster page load, an improved address bar, and the option to override keyboard shortcuts.
- Vivaldi 7.2: Speedy and smart, a serious update
- Vivaldi 7.2 for Android: Finely tuned control
- Vivaldi 7.2 for iOS: More Control, More Customization, More You
WebKit
Safari 18.3 is a quality-of-life update that mostly brings fixes and improvements to existing features.
By contrast, Safari 18.4 brings 84 new features. These include Declarative Web Push, multiple CSS, HTML, and JavaScript features, and many more. Over 180 issues have been fixed, and 13 older features have been deprecated.
Wolvic
Wolvic has taken another big step forward. This set of updates includes better window management, new display options, support for the Meta Quest 3S, and many other improvements.
📡 The Release Radar
- Angular 19.2 - Deliver web apps with confidence
- Astro 5.1, Astro 5.2, Astro 5.3, Astro 5.4, Astro 5.5, Astro 5.6, Astro 5.7 - The web framework for content-driven websites
- Babel 7.27.0 - a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript
- Babylon.js 8.0 - an open game and rendering engine packed into a friendly JavaScript framework
- Bun 1.2 - Incredibly fast JavaScript runtime, bundler, test runner, and package manager – all in one
- Cypress 14, Cypress 14.1 - Fast, easy and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser
- Deno 2.2 - A modern runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript
- Docusaurus 3.7 - Easy to maintain open source documentation websites
- Electron 34.0.0, Electron v34.1.0, Electron v34.2.0, Electron v34.3.0, Electron 35.0.0 - Build cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
- Ember 6.1, Ember 6.2, Ember 6.3 - A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web applications
- ESLint v9.18.0, ESLint v9.19.0, ESLint v9.20.0, ESLint v9.21.0, ESLint v9.22.0, ESLint v9.23.0 - Find and fix problems in your JavaScript code
- Ionic 8.5 - A powerful cross-platform UI toolkit for building native-quality iOS, Android, and Progressive Web Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Inferno v9.0.0 - An extremely fast, React-like JavaScript library for building modern user interfaces
- Jekyll 4.4.0 - Jekyll is a blog-aware static site generator in Ruby
- Material UI v7 - Comprehensive React component library that implements Google's Material Design
- Neutralinojs v6.0.0 - Portable and lightweight cross platform desktop app development framework
- Next.js 15.3 - The React Framework
- Node v23.11.0 (Current), Node v23.10.0 (Current)**, Node v20.19.0 (LTS), Node v23.9.0 (Current), Node v18.20.7 (LTS), Node v23.8.0 (Current), Node v22.14.0 (LTS), Node v20.18.3 (LTS), Node v23.7.0 (Current), Tuesday, January 21, 2025 Security Releases, Node v22.13.0 (LTS), Node v23.6.0 (Current), Node v23.5.0 (Current) - An asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime
- Parcel v2.14.0 - The zero configuration build tool for the web
- pnpm 10.7, pnpm 10.8 - Fast, disk space efficient package manager
- Prettier 3.5 - an opinionated code formatter
- Puppeteer v24.0.0, Puppeteer v24.1.0, Puppeteer v24.2.0, Puppeteer v24.3.0 - JavaScript API for Chrome and Firefox
- React 19.1 - The library for web and native user interfaces
- React Admin v5.5.0 - A frontend Framework for single-page applications
- React Native 0.77, React Native 0.78, React Native 0.79 - A framework for building native applications using React
- Storybook 8.5 - The industry standard workshop for building, documenting, and testing UI components in isolation
- Tailwind CSS v4.0, Tailwind CSS v4.1 - A utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development
- TypeScript 5.8 - a superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output
- Vitest 3.0 - Next generation testing framework powered by Vite
- Vuetify v3.8.0 - Vue Component Framework
- YouTube.js v13.0.0, YouTube.js v13.1.0 - A JavaScript client for YouTube's private API, known as InnerTube
🛠️ Front End Resources
- AI CSS Animations - Make CSS Animations with AI
- Braille Institute Free Font - a family of hyperlegible fonts
- Colorify Rocks - AI Color Palette Generator from Words
- CSS Triggers - A reference for the performance implications of CSS properties
- Flexbox Labs - A visual tool for experimenting with flexbox layouts
- Flexbox Labs Grid - A visual tool for experimenting with grid layouts
- Free Sound - a collaborative collection of free sounds
- Gradienty - Tailwind Gradient Generator
- iconmonstr - Free simple icons for your next project
- ITOA - Image to ASCII Converter
- Phosphor Icons - a flexible icon family
- Photo Gradient - Generate beautiful gradients from colors or from a photo
- Generate QRs - QR code generator and editor
- Reshot - Free Icons & Illustrations
- Symbl - a world of SVG icons, symbols, and design tools
- Tabler Avatars - Free User Avatars
- Tabler Icons - Free and open source icons designed to make your website or app attractive, visually consistent and simply beautiful
- Tabler Illustrations - Effortlessly customize a wide range of SVG illustrations for various projects
- Tailwind Grid Generator - Generate Tailwind CSS grids
- tinygradient - simple gradient generator
- Waveform Renderer - Upload an audio file to render its waveform
- Who Can Use - A tool that brings attention and understanding to how color contrast can affect people with different visual impairments.
There's more where that came from. Explore the rest of the Front End Resource collection.
Wrapping things up
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That's all I have for this issue. Have a great and productive week, keep yourselves safe, and spend as much time as possible with your loved ones. I will see you again next time!