Josh W. Comeau's survey of upcoming CSS features reads less like a changelog and more like a capability manifesto. The Interop project — a rare case of browser vendors actually cooperating — has been systematically burning down the backlog of features that languish in single-engine purgatory for years. Subgrid went from Firefox-only in 2019 to near-universal by end of 2023 after Interop prioritized it. That's the template, and these ten features are next in line. The headline act is CSS functions via @function. You define a named function with parameters and a result value, invoke it inline, and get computed output. Comeau's polar-to-cartesian coordinate converter is the kind of thing that previously required JavaScript or a preprocessor. It's already in Chromium 155. If Interop 2027 picks it up, cross-browser support could land within a year. corner-shape and border-shape are the visual design plays. corner-shape gives you squircles (Apple's beloved superellipse curves), bevels, and other alternatives to quarter-circle border-radius. border-shape goes further — you draw the border yourself with lines, arcs, and Bézier curves, and the element's actual border-box changes shape. Borders, outlines, and box-shadows follow the new geometry. Comeau's card with a circular scoop at the top is a clean demo of what previously required clip-path hacks. Anchored Container Queries solve a real irritant. Anchor Positioning (Interop 2026) lets you tether a tooltip to its trigger, but there was no CSS way to know whether the tooltip had flipped to a fallback position. The Level 2 API adds container queries that detect the flip, so you can point the tooltip's little arrow in the right direction without JavaScript. The inherit() function proposal is earlier-stage — not even on caniuse — but the idea of transforming an inherited value with calc() (e.g., reducing nested border-radius by a fixed amount) is the kind of small utility that eliminates a recurring annoyance. Scroll-triggered animations distinguish themselves from the already-shipped scroll-driven animations. Scroll-driven scrubs through a keyframe as you scroll; scroll-triggered fires a normal timed animation when you reach a scroll threshold. It's the proximity-sensor pattern that currently requires IntersectionObserver in JavaScript. CSS reading-flow and reading-order (mentioned but truncated in the source) address accessibility and tab-order concerns in grid and flex layouts. The meta-story here is the Interop process itself. Mozilla has created a public ranking system for community upvotes to influence Interop 2027 priorities. That's an unusually democratic mechanism for standards work. The pattern is consistent: feature gets added to Interop, browser vendors treat it as a shared commitment, near-100% support follows within roughly a year. The bottleneck is no longer implementation capacity — it's prioritization. Comeau's piece is a well-crafted tutorial-preview hybrid. The interactive code playgrounds, live demos, and progressive-enhancement advice give it practical value beyond the survey format. The writing is enthusiastic without being breathless, and the technical specifics (Chrome 155, Edge 154, Firefox 157 not-yet, Safari 27 not-yet) are precise and current as of October 2026.
