A field guide to the modern web
2026-09-16 08:40 UTC · RSS

Web Platform Journal

Browser engineering, web standards, performance, and developer tooling.

ISSUE 2026.09.16
LAT 37.7749 / LON -122.4194

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:32:15 +0000

Intent to Ship: JPEG XL

It isn’t often that new image formats land in browsers. In the early 2000s we had JPEG, GIF, and PNG. The 2010s gave us WebP, which was a modest step up from JPEG. But the 2020s have given us two new image formats that are a big step up from previous formats: …

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01

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:29:52 +0000

PACT: Anonymous Credentials for the Web

This is the technical companion to our update on Distilled, “Keeping the web open and private in the bot era.” Here we take a deeper look at the problem space, the design we’re proposing, and the problems still left to solve. Bots (and privacy-preserving brows…

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02

Thu, 21 May 2026 18:00:05 +0000

Announcing Web Serial Support in Firefox

Support for Web Serial in Firefox 151 for Desktop Firefox can now connect directly to microcontrollers, development boards, 3D printers, power meters, and other serial-connected hardware from the web. Starting in Firefox 151 for Desktop, support for the Web Se…

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04

Tue, 05 May 2026 15:49:11 +0000

Trustworthy JavaScript for the Open Web

The open web is a critical platform for applications that handle highly sensitive data, from private communications to financial transactions and medical records. Traditionally, servers are trusted to deliver the appropriate code and resources for their web ap…

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06

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:02:36 +0000

Why is WebAssembly a second-class language on the web?

This post is an expanded version of a presentation I gave at the 2025 WebAssembly CG meeting in Munich. WebAssembly has come a long way since its first release in 2017. The first version of WebAssembly was already a great fit for low-level languages like C and…

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08

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:07:24 +0000

Launching Interop 2026

The Interop Project is a cross-browser initiative to improve web compatibility in areas that offer the most benefit to both users and developers. The group, including Apple, Google, Igalia, Microsoft, and Mozilla, takes proposals of features that are well defi…

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11

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:59:13 +0000

Launching Interop 2025

Interop 2025 continues the mission to make the web more consistent across browsers, building on 2024’s 95% interoperability score. This year, 19 focus areas target key developer needs and long-standing issues, including WebRTC improvements, Storage Access API,…

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