Stable: Chrome 98 and Firefox 97

February brought stable releases of Chrome 98 and Firefox 97. Chrome 98 ships the self.structuredClone method, which produces a deep clone of a value using the structured clone algorithm.

Firefox 97 lands the @layer at-rule for CSS Cascade Layers. Cascade layers give you a deliberate way to control specificity: rules inside a layer lose out to rules outside any layer, so you can structure your CSS to avoid fighting specificity wars.

@layer framework {
  /* creates a new layer named framework */
}

Firefox is the first to ship Cascade Layers in a stable release, but broader availability is close (see the beta notes below).

Firefox 97 also gains the scrollbar-gutter property. It reserves space between a box's inner border edge and outer padding edge where a scrollbar would appear, preventing layout shift when content grows and a scrollbar suddenly shows. When no scrollbar is present, the reserved space displays like extra padding. This CSS keeps both sides of a box symmetric by accounting for the scrollbar size:

.container {
  scrollbar-gutter: stable both-edges;
}

Chrome 98 adds support for COLRv1 color gradient vector fonts. These fonts carry multiple colors per glyph—for emoji, flags, or multi-colored letterforms—and can be scaled and rendered with gradient fills.

Betas: Chrome 99, Firefox 98, and Safari 15.4

Beta releases preview what's heading to stable, so they're a good place to test new features or removals that could affect your site. February betas: Chrome 99, Firefox 98, and the ongoing Safari 15.4 beta.

Chrome 99 includes Cascade Layers, matching what's already in the Safari 15.4 beta. With both in beta, expect the feature to reach all evergreen browsers soon.

Chrome 99 also brings new attributes for CanvasRenderingContext2D and a showPicker() method on HTMLInputElement, letting you call up the browser's picker for date, time, color, and file inputs programmatically.

Firefox 98 adds the <dialog> element. Once the Firefox and Safari betas go stable, dialog support should be universal across evergreen browsers. All of these beta features are slated to land in stable browsers in the coming months.