Friday Issue 150

2026-01-23

One hundred and fifty issues in, and the front end still finds new ways to surprise us. This week feels like a time capsule and a launchpad at the same time, with jQuery 4 stirring early web memories while the Temporal API quietly fixes everything that made Date awkward in the first place. There are sharp takes on browser APIs that are not quite as open as the web story suggests, a serious warning about broken dependency chains, and a reminder that iterators can often do the heavy lifting without turning everything into arrays.

On the tooling and ecosystem side, Fabric 7.1 brings a very capable canvas playground with TypeScript support, Astro looks back at a big year, and Svelte ships a batch of important security patches. HTML and CSS continue their golden age with Chrome’s CSS Wrapped report, a gloriously over-the-top 3D card experiment, a rethink of pixel-perfect design, a minimal modal pattern, lovely SVG filter tricks, and even a practical guide to getting favicons right. Mixed news rounds things off with the long story of how Markdown took over, a thoughtful post on disability misconceptions, and the latest Web Almanack chapters for anyone who enjoys disappearing into charts and data.

Thanks for being here for issue 150 and for keeping this little front-end link habit worth continuing. Here is to the next 150, assuming the web does not completely reinvent itself again before next Friday. Happy reading!

JavaScript News

jQuery 4

Oh, magical jQuery! I blame it for hooking me into the JavaScript world, and I've used it since the first version. Also, with my current stack, I haven’t touched it since around 2013, but it brings back good memories of all the sliders, menus, and the first “components” built with it.

It is interesting that, according to https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/javascript_library, jQuery is still used by 80% of the websites. However, in dev surveys, modern frameworks (React, Vue, Angular, Next.js, etc.) take over, and the choice is no longer jQuery.

My guess is that jQuery's popularity mostly drives the creation of many websites built with WordPress and other legacy CMSs that already include jQuery.

https://blog.jquery.com/2026/01/17/jquery-4-0-0/

JavaScript Temporal Object

Currently, limited availability, but hopefully, full support will be available soon. If you ever struggled with Date(), you will definitely love Temporal. I first noticed Temporal around ~2022 in the stage 3 proposal. Adoption has been slow, but it is getting there.

https://piccalil.li/blog/date-is-out-and-temporal-is-in/

Not All Browsers APIs Are “Web” APIs

This post will bring privacy surprises, portability illusions, and let you know that big players keep smaller competitors out by using the idea that the web is open. Or is it? Well, the web is for everyone, but APIs are a different matter. Really good post to dive into.

https://polypane.app/blog/not-all-browser-apis-are-web-apis/

Web dependencies are broken

This is quite a heavy post from Lea Verou. Lea worked on Web Standards for years; this post will be educational and a call to action. Definitely worth reading.

https://lea.verou.me/blog/2026/web-deps/

Arrays vs iterator

https://allthingssmitty.com/2026/01/12/stop-turning-everything-into-arrays-and-do-less-work-instead/

Fabric 7.1

Library to do all sorts of things in Canvas with SVG, images, animation and more. Also, full Typescript support. All in all, looks good and works well in Browser and Node.

https://fabricjs.com/

HTML & CSS News

Chrome dev report on CSS

The Chrome CSS dev team is showing off its good work in 2025. There is everything from customisable components (dialog, popover, anchored container group), Next-gen interactions (scroll-state queries, tree counting, nested view transition) and lots more.

https://chrome.dev/css-wrapped-2025/

Going full 3D into the Card

Another crazy journey from Amit Sheen. Building a 3D world in the Card and how much you can push CSS limits.

https://frontendmasters.com/blog/the-deep-card-conundrum/

Pixel Perfect

I haven’t heard this term for a long time. Probably, I’m lucky to work with the best designers and clients. It’s all about patterns, grid systems and adaptation to any screen. This post has good advice, though.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2026/01/rethinking-pixel-perfect-web-design/

Minimal markup for Modal

One of the cleanest posts to introduce into the HTML modal with enhancements.

https://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/minimal-modal.html

SVG Filters

Quick intro to SVG filters.

https://www.amitmerchant.com/svg-filters-are-just-amazing/

How to favicon in 2025

Why can’t this super tiny thing also be simple to implement, right? This post offers a simple variation and an ultimate 6-step solution, but it is not as bad as it sounds.

https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/how-to-favicon-in-2021-six-files-that-fit-most-needs