New to the web platform in October

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

Rachel Andrew

Stable browser releases

In October 2023 Firefox 119, Safari 17.1, Chrome 118, and Chrome 119 became stable. This post looks at what that means for the web platform.

JavaScript features in Firefox 119

In Firefox 119 is JavaScript array grouping with the Object.groupBy and Map.groupBy static methods.

Browser Support

  • Chrome: 117.
  • Edge: 117.
  • Firefox: 119.
  • Safari: 17.4.

Source

Also in Firefox 119 are the isWellFormed() and toWellFormed() methods of String. These can be used to check whether a string contains well-formed Unicode, and to sanitize a string to well-formed Unicode. These methods are now interoperable across the three major engines.

Browser Support

  • Chrome: 111.
  • Edge: 111.
  • Firefox: 119.
  • Safari: 16.4.

Source

The HTML <search> element is now interoperable

Chrome 118 includes the <search> element, a new HTML element representing the parts of the document or application that are used for search or filtering. This feature is now interoperable across the three major engines.

Browser Support

  • Chrome: 118.
  • Edge: 118.
  • Firefox: 118.
  • Safari: 17.

Source

Horizontal rules inside select elements

Two versions of Chrome landed in October. In Chrome 119 is a small addition to HTML <select> elements. You can now add a horizontal rule between options that displays as a divider between the items. Find out more in Select element: now with horizontal rules.

CSS scoping

Chrome 118 includes scoped CSS with the @scope rule. This rule provides a way to select elements within a subtree of the DOM. Find out more in Limit the reach of your selectors with the CSS @scope at-rule.

Browser Support

  • Chrome: 118.
  • Edge: 118.
  • Firefox: behind a flag.
  • Safari: 17.4.

Source

CSS prefers-reduced-transparency

Chrome 118 includes the prefers-reduced-transparency media feature. This is one of a set of features that let you check preferences set by a user in their device, and respond to meet their needs in your code. Learn more about the feature in CSS prefers-reduced-transparency.

Browser Support

  • Chrome: 118.
  • Edge: 118.
  • Firefox: behind a flag.
  • Safari: not supported.

Source

CSS relative color syntax

In Chrome 119 is a powerful new feature from CSS Color 5—relative color syntax. This lets you derive a color from another color, using any color space or syntax you need.

WebAssembly garbage collection (WasmGC)

Chrome 119 includes WasmGC to make working with garbage-collected languages like Kotlin, PHP, or Java faster in WebAssembly. Find all the details in WebAssembly Garbage Collection (WasmGC) now enabled by default in Chrome.

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 120 and Safari 17.2. These releases bring many great features to the platform. Check out the release notes for all of the details. Here are just a few highlights.

Safari 17.2 includes many new features. For CSS there is support for the CSS Custom Highlight API, the mask-border properties, the counter-set property, and many other features. In addition there are lots of fixes to existing features to improve interoperability.

For HTML, Safari 17.2 includes support for the name attribute for the <details> element. And in Web APIs there is support for Fetch Priority and responsive images ar now enabled in <link rel=preload>.

Firefox 120 adds support for the CSS rh and rlh units, text-wrap: balance, and the light-dark() function.

Part of the New to the web series