A Focus on 2025

🚀 Frontend Focus

#722 — December 17, 2025 | Read on the web

✍️ Hi! This is the last issue of Frontend Focus for 2025. It's been another busy year for the web platform, with various new features and APIs added to our toolbelt. We've looked over what we've shared throughout the year, and we're revisiting some of the 2025 highlights — all based on clicks by readers, be that in email, on the web, or via our RSS feed. It's a fun way to recap the year, look back, and highlight some things you may have missed first time around.

If you've enjoyed the newsletter and found it valuable, please consider forwarding it on to a friend or colleague, or maybe follow us on Bluesky. A big thanks for reading! We'll be back in your inbox in January to take on all things frontend in 2026. Let's get to it!
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Your editors, 🦋 Chris Brandrick & Peter Cooper

🗓️ Top Ten of 2025

01: Six CSS Snippets Every Frontend Developer Should Know — Adam shared a similarly popular list last year, so it's of little surprise to see the idea prove popular again. A grab bag of sound snippets worth knowing which are “bigger, more powerful, and leverage progressive enhancement a bit more”.

Adam Argyle

02: Default Styles for H1 Elements are Changing — We shared this back in April — it outlined how browsers were updating the default user agent (UA) styles for nested section headings. A high-level change that many of you wanted to be on top of.

Simon Pieters (MDN)

Solve Enterprise Auth, Identity, and Security For Your App — Enterprise customers demand SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and audit logs that meet strict compliance standards. WorkOS offers developers a platform for shipping these features fast with a suite of easy-to-integrate APIs and a portal for streamlined customer onboarding.

WorkOS sponsor

03: You're Not a Front-end Developer Until You've... — This fun, tongue-in-cheek checklist of the various oddities we all do as frontend devs is still amusing now.

Nic Chan

04: What You Need to Know About Modern CSS — Chris runs through a list of things which are now valuable to know either because they are “pretty fresh or have enjoyed a boost in browser support”. Covers things such as the popover attribute, the powerful if() function, the new field-sizing property, and more. An excellent overview of what new stuff we should be paying attention to, along with some pointers as to what’s on the horizon.

Chris Coyier

📺⏪ Frontend REWIND — The Top YouTube Videos of 2025

25 New & Rad Features of CSS — An energetic half-hour talk in which Adam goes on a tour of recent CSS features, including field sizing, custom scrollbar styling, math functions, scroll-driven animations and more.
Adam Argyle

CSS if() Functions & reading-flow — A solid and straightforward demo of what we can now do with the if function.
Una Kravets

What is CSS Owl Selector (* + *)? — A quick look at the CSS ‘owl’ selector, including how it works, why you should use it, and the viable alternatives.
Zoran Jambor

Next-Level Features Every Web Dev Should Know — A great high-level overview of various modern features, including Container queries, scroll-state(), dialog, and more.
Jad Joubran

The Death of the Browser — Could web browsers become a nostalgic memory? This talk shares the journey from the invention of the browser, to the data arms race, to the dawn of AI agents.
Rachel-Lee Nabors

05: The <select> Element Can Now Be Customized with CSS — Back in March we got an accessible, standardized way to create styleable <select> elements — thanks to appearance: base-select. Adam explained how this change had been “many years in the making”. The result? We now have a rich component that won’t break in older browsers.

Adam Argyle

06: CSS text-box-trim — Another from Adam, this time explaning how this handy property works, letting us have fine control over the leading space found both above and below text.

Adam Argyle

LLMs Are Querying Databases - Postgres Wasn’t Built for This — Tiger Data is experimenting with self-describing Postgres, allowing LLMs to generate better SQL. Up to 27% gains.

Tiger Data sponsor

07: Breadcrumbs are 'Dead' in Web Design — Once a clear staple in web design, the author argued that they’ve now become somewhat obsolete.

Noah Davis

08: Cool Native HTML Elements You Should Already Be Using — A roundup of numerous, native HTML elements that don't quite see as much usage relative to others (such as kbd, datalist, progress, and more).

Harrison Broadbent

09: A Guide to Scroll-Driven Animations with Just CSS — Back in the summer, Saron shared this look at how to start using scroll-driven animations via CSS. Code examples shared here highlight how this technique can be used to create progress bars or animate elements into the viewport.

Saron Yitbarek

10: "I’m More Proud of These 128 Kilobytes Than Anything I’ve Built Since" — A good look back at a project and how strict constraints (such as bandwidth, processing power, etc) can often result in innovation. A popular, and technically rich, reminder to us all to consider the widest range of users’ and to design things accordingly.

Mike Hall

We Benchmarked 5 AI Code Review Tools. Here's What We Found — Macroscope had the highest bug detection rate on the market. Use MACROFOCUS for 50% off your first 2 months.

Macroscope sponsor

11: A Friendly Introduction to SVG
Josh W. Comeau

12: The Web Animation Performance Tier List
Matt Perry

13: Liquid Glass in the Browser — Refraction with CSS and SVG
Chris Feijoo

14: Brand New Layouts with CSS Subgrid
Josh W. Comeau

15: Item Flow: A Unified Concept for Layout
Jen Simmons (WebKit)

💌 That's a wrap! We hope you have a great Christmas season, whether you celebrate or not, and we'll be back in your inbox on Wednesday, January 7.

Ipx.