July Baseline digest: Intl.Locale and rect() cross the line
The edition published on August 10 moves Intl.Locale into newly available — a standard way to parse, modify, and inspect Unicode language and region tags, useful anywhere dates, numbers, and currencies are formatted without an extra library. Array.fromAsync(), which turns asynchronous data streams into an array, and the CSS rect() function, which describes rectangular shapes for clip-path and offset-path far more readably than going through polygon(), both moved to widely available. An updated MDN guide to choosing image formats shipped alongside the digest.
Source
Julski Baseline digest: Intl.Locale i rect() prelaze pragweb.dev Blog · Original published August 10, 2026
The July edition of the monthly roundup was published on August 10. It is short but useful, because it brings two things that directly reduce the need for libraries.
Newly available
Intl.Locale entered newly available, a standard way to parse, modify, and inspect Unicode language and region tags. Until now that meant parsing strings by hand or reaching for a library.
Widely available
Array.fromAsync()turns asynchronous data streams into an array, behaving likeArray.from()but over async iterators.- The CSS
rect()function sets insets from the containing block's edges directly, describing rectangular shapes forclip-pathandoffset-pathfar more readably than the earlier approach. - An updated MDN guide to choosing image formats shipped alongside the digest, with a browser support overview.
Related
A class prefix selector is now spec text in Selectors Level 5
The draft of August 18 adds section 2.1, Class Prefix Selectors, defining .foo-* to match any class beginning with that prefix. It replaces the attribute-selector workarounds every design system carries. Nothing implements it yet, and the matching rule has an edge that will catch people: .foo-* does not match foo--bar.
CSS Working Groupverified
Put Baseline in CI so the browser stops deciding for you
Three packages and about 20 minutes. One config tells your build which browsers you target, a linter warns when a stylesheet reaches past that line, and CI says it on the pull request instead of a user saying it in a bug report six weeks later.
web.dev, npmverified
A timing chart as the blueprint for SMIL animation in SVG
On August 20 at Smashing Magazine, Johan Grobler described a method in which a complex SMIL animation is first drawn as a timing chart and only then written in markup. Every bar on the chart corresponds to one animate element, and its length and position become the values of the dur and begin attributes. Because a single animate changes exactly one property of one element, the count climbs fast: a three-dot loader takes six of them. The piece also covers synchronizing to another animation's start or end through the begin attribute, and honoring prefers-reduced-motion through the picture element.
Smashing Magazineverified