--- title: "Wrapping up the year in CSS" publication: "Frontend Focus" issue: 721 published_at: "2025-12-10" canonical_url: "https://frontendfoc.us/issues/721" --- Plus a video codec wins an Emmy. | Together with [![SurveyJS logo\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_1000,h_410/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:20/yrja59qflovcjwojxypq.png)](https://surveyjs.io/?utm_source=frontend&utm_medium=email) 🚀 **Frontend** Focus #​721 — December 10, 2025 | [Read on the web](https://frontendfoc.us/issues/721) [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/v1765366713/tr6l0nkx816htrcbasfr.png)](https://chrome.dev/css-wrapped-2025/) [CSS Wrapped 2025](https://chrome.dev/css-wrapped-2025/) — Here’s a fun recap of the new tools and features added to the web platform this year, including CSS Carousels, customizable selects, scroll state queries and more. There’s a rather [whimsical video running through the highlights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnT1XBZWHMk) too. Chrome DevRel [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/a70222f7.png)](https://surveyjs.io/?utm_source=frontend&utm_medium=email) [A Secure, Customizable Form UI for Your JavaScript App](https://surveyjs.io/?utm_source=frontend&utm_medium=email) — Create branded, dynamic forms with SurveyJS Creator and render them directly in your app. Populate fields with existing data from your DB and collect new inputs in a clean, form-based UI. A flexible form library for patient forms, applications, and more — with full data control and easy PDF export. SurveyJS sponsor [Making Complex Web Apps Faster](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2025/12/09/making-complex-web-apps-faster/) — An early-stage [proposal](https://github.com/WICG/delayed-message-timing/blob/main/README.md) for a new ‘Delayed Message Timing API’ to help deal with the slowdowns that multiple parallel contexts (_iframes, threads, multiple windows, etc_) can introduce. Feedback is being sought. Joone Hur & Patrick Brosset [Did You Know Your Browser Has Two Accessibility Trees?](https://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/two-trees.html) — A technical deep dive into Chrome’s dual accessibility architecture, tracing the lifecycle of an event, DOM changes, eventual output, and more. Max Design ⚡️ IN BRIEF - 🏆 The AV1 video codec has [won an Emmy](https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/av1-video-codec-wins-emmy/) for "its impact on how the world delivers video content". - 🔐 _Let's Encrypt_ has now been with us for a decade. [This post tracks the growth](https://letsencrypt.org/2025/12/09/10-years.html) over the past ten years — they're now close to protecting one billion web sites. - 🐶 Search engine Kagi has [released v1.0](https://blog.kagi.com/orion) of its browser: _Orion_ — interestingly it's built on the WebKit rendering engine, _not_ the ubiquitous Chromium. - 👁️ The W3C with a little PSA: [No ARIA is better than bad ARIA](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/practices/read-me-first/). - 🔎 Google shared its '[Year in Search](https://trends.withgoogle.com/year-in-search/2025/)', if you fancy recapping the trends of 2025. - 🛍️ Still looking for a Christmas gift? The [Internet Archive has some merch](https://store.archive.org). 📙 Articles, Opinions & Tutorials [How Fast Can Browsers Process Base64 Data?](https://lemire.me/blog/2025/11/29/how-fast-can-browsers-process-base64-data/) — It's on the order of gigabytes per second on modern hardware in most cases, except for Firefox (which has some optimizations coming soon) and Servo. Daniel Lemire [Accessible by Design: The Role of the `lang` Attribute](https://www.htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2025/6/) — On the importance of including the language attribute in your code — “_a tiny line of code that provides universal access to your content_”. Todd Libby [How CERN Handles Millions of Time-Series Signals Effortlessly](https://www.tigerdata.com/blog/how-cern-powers-ground-breaking-physics-with-timescaledb) — CERN generates millions of signals daily—TimescaleDB boosts writes, compresses data, and accelerates queries for operators. Tiger Data sponsor [The Anatomy of a Web Performance Report](https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/the-anatomy-of-a-web-performance-report/) — Edwin shares a high-level overview of performance reports, explaining the typical sections you’ll see, why you’re seeing them, and what decisions they enable. Edwin Molina Hernández [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/v1765365921/aqococixtmkro4tbtfvj.png)](https://j0nah.com/i-failed-to-recreate-the-1996-space-jam-website-with-claude) [I Failed to Recreate the 1996 _Space Jam_ Website with Claude](https://j0nah.com/i-failed-to-recreate-the-1996-space-jam-website-with-claude) — The tale of attempting to prompt a popular AI tool to recreate what many consider to be a monument to late 90s web design. “_Some things are just irreproducibly perfect._” Jonah Glover [NoLoJS: Reducing the JS Workload with HTML and CSS](https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/nolojs-reducing-js-workload-html-css/) — Thanks to various new features and functions in our combined HTML & CSS tool belt we now “_need to consider replacing some ‘standard’ JS patterns with new methods that require no, or lo, JS_”. Aaron T. Grogg [The 'F*** Off' Contact Page](https://www.nicchan.me/blog/the-f-off-contact-page/) — When a contact page, frustratingly, wants to encourage a user to do _anything_ but actually reach out. Nic Chan [Controlling Dialogs and Popovers with the Invoker Commands API](https://www.htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2025/7/) Aubrey Sambor [That Time I Tried Explaining HTML and CSS to My 5-Year Old Niece](https://css-tricks.com/that-time-i-tried-explaining-html-and-css-to-my-5-year-old-niece/) Kevine Nzapdi [Non-Blocking Cross-Browser Image Rendering on the Canvas](https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/non-blocking-image-canvas/) Alexander Myshov 🧰 Tools, Code & Resources [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/vomaksao2mpab1vs87bk.jpg)](https://browserscore.dev/) [Browser Score: Test How Much Your Browser Supports Web Platform Features](https://browserscore.dev/) — Formerly called CSS3 Test, this has some useful filters like the ability to view only CSS properties or selectors. You can also choose whether to include/exclude experimental, stable, or legacy features. Lea Verou [MACROSCOPE - Ship Fewer Bugs, Merge Faster](https://links.macroscope.com/frontend-focus) — Macroscope code review has the #1 signal-to-noise ratio on the market. Use `MACROFOCUS` for 50% off your first 2 months! Macroscope sponsor [Telescope: A Cross-Browser Web Performance Testing Agent](https://github.com/cloudflare/telescope) — Has support for Edge, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, and lets you add various parameters to the command (via CLI or in a Node.js script), such as throttling, viewport size, and a generated HTML report. cloudflare [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/v1765373475/pouvlcrjur4xxxfoplid.png)](https://github.com/filipsobol/sonda) [Sonda: A Universal Bundle Visualizer and Analyzer](https://github.com/filipsobol/sonda) — Works with many popular bundlers and frameworks and will generate an accurate interactive HTML report via source map analysis. [Try a demo](https://sonda.dev/demo) on the docs site. Filip Sobol 🤖 [React Grab: A React-Focused Tool for Agentic Development](https://www.react-grab.com/blog/agent) — Aiden is well known for his [React Scan](https://github.com/aidenybai/react-scan) tool for detecting performance issues in React apps — now he’s turned his hand to giving coding agents React superpowers. It lets you “grab” context from your app’s components to feed to an agent of your choice for making detailed changes. Aiden Bai and Ben Maclaurin [CanIUse Embed: Embed a 'Can I Use...' Compatibility Table on Your Site](https://github.com/pengzhanbo/caniuse-embed) — Like similar tools, the data is based on the [Can I Use website](https://caniuse.com/) and [MDN’s browser compatibility data](https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data). This purports to provide a more performant solution. pengzhanbo [NativeWindUI: 30+ Reusable Components, Screens, & Flows for React Native](https://nativewindui.com/) Ronin Technologies 📬 **Got a new email address?** You can [change your email here](https://frontendfoc.us/edit_subscription/*|UID|*). --- **Bored of us?** Click [here to stop getting this newsletter](https://frontendfoc.us/leave/*|UID|*). --- **Got a link for us?** Reply and tell us. We can't include everything but we'll take a look. --- Published by Cooper Press Ltd. Curated by [Chris Brandrick](https://bsky.app/profile/brandrick.bsky.social) & [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/cooperx86). Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom [Stop getting this newsletter](https://frontendfoc.us/leave/*|UID|*) [Ipx.](https://frontendfoc.us/open/721/*|UID|*?ipx=t)