New to the web platform in January

Discover some of the interesting features that landed in stable and beta web browsers during January 2023.

Jan 31, 2023

Rachel Andrew

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Stable browser releases #

In January 2023, Firefox 109, Chrome 109, and Safari 16.3 became stable. Let's take a look at what this means for the web platform.

MathML #

Chrome 109 supports MathML Core, a language for describing mathematical notation embeddable in HTML and SVG. This release means that MathML is now interoperable across all the major engines.

The scrollend event #

Firefox 109 implements scrollend. This event provides a reliable way to detect that a scroll is complete. Find out more about this event, which is also being implemented in Chrome, in the article Scrollend, a new JavaScript event.

The lh CSS length unit and hyphenate-limit-chars #

For CSS in Chrome we have the lh length unit. This unit is equivalent to the computed value of the line-height property on the element on which it is used.

Also, the hyphenate-limit-chars property specifying the minimum number of characters in a hyphenated word.

Content-Security-Policy (CSP) prefetch-src #

Safari 16.3 is mostly a release of fixes, and resolves a number of CSS sizing issues. The only new feature listed in the notes, is the addition of the Content-Security-Policy (CSP) prefetch-src directive.

Features for Chrome on Android #

New in Chrome on Android is Secure Payment Confirmation (SPC). This is a proposed web standard that allows customers to authenticate with a credit card issuer, bank, or other payment service provider using a platform authenticator—typically activated with a device's screen unlock feature such as a fingerprint sensor.

Also new for Chrome on Android is the Origin Private File System (OPFS), part of the File System Access API on Android. This includes all of the File System Access API surface, minus the show{OpenFile, SaveFile, Directory}Picker() methods and the Drag and Drop API integration.

Beta browser releases #

Beta browser versions give you a preview of things that will be in the next stable version of the browser. It's a great time to test new features, or removals, that could impact your site before the world gets that release. New betas are Firefox 110, and Chrome 110.

Chrome 110 includes the CSS initial-letter property. This property provides a way to set the number of lines that an initial letter should sink into the text. Learn more in the article Control your drop caps with CSS initial-letter.

Also, for CSS in Chrome 110 is the :picture-in-picture pseudo-class. This gives you a way to target and customize the media player when videos enter and exit picture-in-picture mode.

Chrome includes the setSinkID() method of the AudioContext API. This method provides a way to change the destination audio device when using Web Audio.

Firefox 110 includes size Container Queries, which will bring us interoperability across the three main browser engines for this long-awaited feature.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai.