Chrome 118 Beta

JSJam Live, Wednesday at 12pm PT

This week is another open mic to discuss the JavaScript news of the week. We'll be taking next week off, so don't miss your chance to hang out and get your fill of JSJam!

Last week, we discussed the release of Bun 1.0, the demise of Rome, and the upcoming Strange Loop conference. You can listen to the recording here.

Story of the Week

Chrome 118 Beta - Scoped Styles, Media Features, Accessibility, and More

Released on Wednesday, September 13, 2023, the Chrome 118 beta brings a plethora of enhancements across platforms including Android, ChromeOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. This version is built with user experience and developer convenience in mind. Here's a rundown of all the new additions:

Scoped styles: Lets developers define style rules based on the proximity of a scoping root.
CSS logical flow-relative values: New values that adjust according to the writing mode or direction of an element.
Media Queries enhancements: Adaptations for reduced transparency preferences and querying scripting language support.
Transform-box property expansion: Influences how reference boxes for transform properties are computed.
Keyboard-focusable scroll containers: Making scroll containers naturally accessible through keyboard navigation.
Consistent use of option label attribute: Ensuring the label attribute is used uniformly across different modes.
Privacy Sandbox Developer Enrollment: A new procedure for Privacy Sandbox relevance and measurement APIs.
Modified cookie handling via JavaScript: Enhanced security through control character handling.
Uniform minimum font size across languages: Promoting interoperability and accessibility.
Smooth UA transitions during navigation: An API to guarantee fluid visual transitions.
URL parser refinement: Preservation of percent-encoded ASCII characters in URLs.
Protected Audiences negative targeting: Extending audience targeting capabilities for online ads.
Streamlined Payment Request flows: Removing the user activation requirement for smoother transactions.
WebUSB API in Extension Service Workers: Extending WebUSB API accessibility.
XML CDATA section handling: Addressing libxml bug by merging consecutive CDATA sections.
beforeunload handler dialog update: Refining cancel dialog conditions.
WebRTC encoded transform: Allowing metadata manipulation in audio and video frames.
Deprecation of non-standard appearance keywords: Deactivating low usage, non-standard keywords to streamline user experience.

Podcasts of the Week

JavaScript Jabber - The True Measure of UX: Core Web Vitals & Beyond
DevtoolsFM - Corbin Crutchley's Framework Field Guide
JS Party - Type War (what is it good for?)
Web Rush - RedwoodJS with Tom Preston-Werner
React Round Up - All Astro with Fred Schott
Modern Web - Svelte, Open Source, and Discord Bots with Willow (aka Ghost)
PodRocket - What web components are good at with Nolan Lawson

One More Thing

Ryan Carniato had Pooya Parsa from the Nuxt team on his stream and he made a big announcement related to SolidStart! They will no longer be pursuing the Astro integration and will instead be using Nitro as their underlying server for the SolidStart metaframework. Check out the video to learn why:

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