Discover some of the interesting features that have landed in stable and beta
web browsers during October 2024.
Stable browser releases
In October 2024, Firefox
131,
Firefox 132,
Safari 18.1, and
Chrome 130 became stable. This
post looks at the new features added to the web platform.
Synchronous iterator helpers
Firefox 131 adds support for synchronous iterator helpers. For example,
Iterator.prototype.forEach()
and Iterator.prototype.map().
These helpers allow array-like operations on iterators without creating intermediate array objects,
including very large data sets where creating an intermediate array wouldn’t be possible.
Text fragments
Also in Firefox 131 is support for text fragments,
along with the CSS
::target-text
pseudo-element.
Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State (CHIPS)
Firefox 131 includes
CHIPS
letting you opt cookies into partitioned storage using the partitioned
directive of the Set-Cookie HTTP header.
Media updates
In the second Firefox release during October are a set of media features that
all join Baseline Newly available.
Firefox 132 includes
the requestVideoFrameCallback()
and cancelVideoFrameCallback()
methods of HTMLVideoElement.
Also included is the
MediaStreamTrack.getCapabilities()
method.
fetchPriority
The Fetch Priority API indicates the relative priority of resources to the
browser. It’s supported from Firefox 132, which means that this helpful
API is now Baseline Newly available.
Learn more in
Optimize resource loading with the Fetch Priority API.
Full box-decoration-break support
Chrome 130 includes full, unprefixed support for the CSS box-decoration-break
property. This includes the value of clone for block and inline
fragmentation.
Learn more about the property in
The box-decoration-break property in Chrome 130.
The nested declarations rule
Chrome 130 and Firefox 132 support CSS Nested Declarations,
this means that nested CSS is correctly parsed as explained in
CSS nesting improves with CSSNestedDeclarations.
The Web Serial connected attribute and RFCOMM connection events
Chrome 130 adds a boolean SerialPort.connected attribute.
The attribute returns true if the serial port is logically connected.
With this feature, Bluetooth RFCOMM serial ports dispatch these events
when the port becomes logically connected or disconnected.
This feature is intended to allow applications to detect when a Bluetooth
RFCOMM serial port is available without opening the port.
Learn more in
Bluetooth RFCOMM updates in Web Serial.
Accessibility fixes in Safari
The Safari 18.1 release comes quickly after Safari 18, and fixes a number of
accessibility issues, notably with display: contents.
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 133
and
Chrome 131.
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.
Firefox 133 supports the ImageDecoder, ImageTrackList, and ImageTrack
interfaces of the
WebCodecs API,
enabling the decoding images from the main and worker threads.
Firefox 133 also supports
WorkerNavigator.permissions.
Chrome 131 includes
CSS highlight inheritance,
where the CSS highlight
pseudo-classes, such as ::selection and ::highlight,
inherit their properties through the pseudo highlight chain,
rather than the element chain.
The result is a more intuitive model for inheritance of properties in highlights.
Also in Chrome 131 is support for CSS paged media @page margin boxes,
so you can provide custom headers and footers when printing from the web.