State of CSS 2023

This year Chen Hui Jing took the lead of the survey design process, building on the work done by Lea Verou last year. And as usual, your feedback here will play a key role in helping browser vendors prioritize their roadmaps and work towards better compatibility between browsers. With all this out of the way, let's see how CSS has evolved so far in 2023!

Cascade Layers are Useless

I've heard several people say they've tried Cascade Layers but didn't see any changes, so they dropped them again. That can also easily happen to you when you structure your CSS in layers for the first time. I can explain why.

Watch Transitions in Slow Motion in Chrome’s DevTools

The animations panel lets you slow down the animations happening in the browser so you watch them play out at much slower speeds and troubleshoot the mechanics of the animation.

Fit-to-Width Text

What if I will tell you how we could solve fit-to-width text with pure CSS without any hardcoded parameters? Curiously, scroll-driven animations will allow us to do just that! Join me as I continue exploring the experimental implementations of the latest specs.

The New CSS

What I expect to see overall is that the perception and thus the role of CSS in the design process will change from being mainly a presentational styling tool at the end of the waterfall to a tool that is being used at the heart of making design decisions early on. The value of a designer who knows how to prototype and build web components with modern CSS will therefore increase a lot.