Neither Chrome, Safari, nor Firefox have shipped new features in the last couple of weeks, but fear not because leading this issue of What’s !important is some of the web development industry’s best educators with, frankly, some killer content.
The new ::search-text pseudo (Chrome 144) matches are yellow while the current target (::search-text:current) is orange, but ::search-text enables us to change that.
Accessibility advice around modals have commonly taught us to trap focus within the modal. Upon further research, it seems like we no longer need to trap focus within the <dialog> (even in modal mode).
A while back, Temani tacked a repeating grid of hexagon shapes. Well, he's updated it with modern CSS features that result in fewer magic numbers. And it's impressive!
Semantic HTML does a lot more accessibility work than we usually give it credit for already — and ARIA is simple to abuse when we use it both as a shortcut and as a supplement.
The developer community hasn’t wasted any time kicking off 2026 with some really great articles, demos, and insights. Firefox 147 and Chrome 144 also shipped, and while they’re not jam-packed with features, the releases are still pretty exciting for what’s normally a slow time of year, so without further ado, here’s what’s important from the last couple of weeks (or should I say the first couple of weeks, of 2026?)…
Super cool new CodePen feature alert! You've probably seen a bunch of "interactive" demos that let you changed values on the fly from a UI panel embedded directly in the demo.
Lee Meyer recently spoke at Web Directions Summit 2025. This is his experience, not only speaking at the event, but experiencing the event through the lens of anxiety and imposter syndrome.
