While the title is “State of HTML”, anything that wouldn’t fit better in State of CSS or State of JS is fair game. This includes topics such as accessibility, browser APIs, web components, templating, static site generation, media formats, and more. This may seem strange at first, but is no different than how the HTML specification itself covers a lot more than just HTML markup.
Reading List
The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.
Influence the State of HTML 2025 Survey!
Two years ago, I was funded by Google to design the inaugural State of HTML survey. While I had led State of … surveys before (also graciously sponsored by Google), that was by far the most intense, as 0→1 projects often are. In addition to the research, content, and analysis work that goes into every State of … survey, the unique challenges it presented were a forcing function for finally tackling some longstanding UX issues with these surveys. As a result, we pioneered new survey interaction UIs, and validated them via usability testing. This work did not just affect State of HTML, but had ripple effects on all subsequent State of … surveys.
The results made it all worth it. Turnout was the highest ever for a new Devographics [1] survey: 21 thousand participants, which remains a record high for State of HTML. The survey findings heavily influenced Interop 2024 (hello Popover API and Declarative Shadow DOM!) and helped prioritize several other initiatives, such as stylable selects.
This is the goal of these surveys: to drive meaningful change in the web platform. Sure, getting a shareable score about what you know and seeing how you compare to the rest of the industry is fun, but the reason browser vendors pour thousands of dollars into funding these surveys is because they provide unique vendor-neutral insights into developer pain points and priorities, which helps them make better decisions about what to work on. And this ultimately helps you: by getting your voice heard, you can directly influence the tools you work with. It’s a win-win: developers get better tools, and browser vendors get better roadmaps.
State of HTML 2025
Last year, I was too busy to take the lead again. Wrapping up my PhD and starting a new job immediately after, there was no time to breathe, let alone lead a survey. I’m happy to be returning to it this year, but my joy is bittersweet.
When I was first asked to lead this year’s survey a few months ago, I was still too busy to take it on. Someone else from the community accepted the role — someone incredibly knowledgeable and talented who would have done a fantastic job. But they live in the Middle East, and as the war escalated, their safety and their family’s well-being were directly impacted. Understandably, leading a developer survey became the least of their concerns. In the meantime, I made a few decisions that opened up some availability, and I was able to step in at the last minute. It’s a sobering reminder that events which feel far away can hit close to home — shaping not just headlines, but the work and lives of people we know.
Web Platform Features at the verge of Interop
A big part of these surveys is “feature questions”: respondents are presented with a series of web platform features, and asked about their familiarity and sentiment towards them. At the end, they get a score based on how many they were familiar with that they can share with others, and browser vendors and standards groups get signal on which upcoming features to prioritize or improve.
You can see which features were included in last year’s survey here or in [2] the table below.
State of HTML Features
I believe that co-designing these surveys with the community is the best way to avoid blind spots. While the timeline is tighter than usual this year (the survey is launching later this month!), there is still a little time to ask:
👉🏼 Which upcoming HTML features or Web APIs are currently on your radar? 👈🏼
What does “on your radar” mean? Features you’re excited about and would love to see progress on.
Why focus on upcoming features? The best candidates for these surveys are features that are mature enough to be fleshed out (at least a mature proposal, ideally a spec and WPT tests), but not so mature they have already been implemented in every browser. These are the features for which a survey such as this can drive meaningful impact.
If it’s so early for a feature that it’s not yet fleshed out, it’s hard to make progress via initiatives such as Interop. Interest is still useful signal to help prioritize work on fleshing it out, but it’s a bit of a longer game. And for features that are already implemented everywhere, the only thing that can improve things further is passage of time — a problem for which I unfortunately have no solution (yet).
Obviously we’re looking at all the usual suspects already, and initiatives such as webstatus.dev and Web platform features explorer provide a treasure trove of data which makes this task infinitely easier than it used to be. But this kind of preliminary signal is also useful for filtering and prioritization — to give you a sense, my list of candidate new features to ask about already has 57 items (!). Given that State of HTML 2024 asked about 49 features, that will need some very heavy pruning.
Any way to reach me works fine. You can post in the comments here (preferred), or reply on BlueSky, Mastodon, or Threads. Make sure to check the other replies first, and 👍 those with features you care about. Looking forward to your ideas and comments!
Devographics is the company behind “State of …” surveys. ↩︎
As an Easter egg, this widget is just a
<details>element with custom CSS. Inspect it to see how it works! It works best in Chrome and Safari, as they fully support::details-content. Chrome also supportscalc-size(), which enables a nice animation, while the interaction in Safari is more abrupt. In terms of a11y, the summary gets spoken out as a regular<summary>element, with “Show more” or “Show less” at the end of its content. It seems ok-ish to me, but I’d love to hear from those with more expertise in this area. ↩︎
Apple, as Promised, Formally Appeals €500 Million DMA Fine in the EU
Here’s the full statement, given by Apple to the media, including Daring Fireball:
“Today we filed our appeal because we believe the European Commission’s decision — and their unprecedented fine — go far beyond what the law requires. As our appeal will show, the EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users. We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”
Everyone — including, I believe, at Apple — agrees that the policy changes Apple announced at the end of June are confusing and seemingly incomplete in terms of fee structures. What Apple is saying here in this statement is they needed to launch these policy changes now, before the full fee implications are worked out, to avoid the daily fines they were set to be penalized with for the steering rules.
Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:
Apple also reiterates that the EU has continuously redefined what exactly it needs to do under the DMA. In particular, Apple says the European Commission has expanded the definition of steering. Apple adjusted its guidelines to allow EU developers to link out to external payment methods and use alternative in-app payment methods last year. Now, however, Apple says the EU has redefined steering to include promotions of in-app alternative payment options and in-app webviews, as well as linking to other alternative app marketplaces and the third-party apps distributed through those marketplaces.
Furthermore, Apple says that the EU mandated that the Store Services Fee include multiple tiers. [...] You can view the full breakdown of the two tiers on Apple’s developer website. Apple says that it was the EU who dictated which features should be included in which tier. For example, the EU mandated that Apple move app discovery features to the second tier.
Like I wrote last week, “byzantine compliance with a byzantine law”.
Quantum computing company IonQ raised $1B via a sale of stock and warrants to Heights Capital Management, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group (Anthony Hughes/Bloomberg)
Anthony Hughes / Bloomberg:
Quantum computing company IonQ raised $1B via a sale of stock and warrants to Heights Capital Management, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group — Shares of IonQ fell 1.4% to $43.79 apiece as of 10:20 a.m. on Monday in New York. The stock has more than doubled from $18 each in early March.
The best Fitbits for your fitness and health
Editor’s note: Amazon Prime Day kicks off on July 8th; however, if you want to get a head start on your online shopping, we’ve rounded up the best early Prime Day deals you can already get. In 2025, you might wonder if Fitbit is still relevant. Despite getting acquired by Google, Fitbit remains one of the most recognizable names […]
A Pokémon fan got the Pope to sign his Popplio card
One recent visitor to the Vatican may have pulled off a historical first: getting the sitting Pope to autograph a Pokémon card. But that Pokémon fan’s interaction with Pope Leo XIV has another layer, because the choice of Pokémon card is so, well, choice. On Saturday, Pope Leo XIV welcomed visitors from across Europe and […]