News: Google Backs Off Blocking Cookies, New CSS Features, and Vercel’s Feature Flags SDK

Front-End Fire

Google is making headline news once again as it reverses course on a decision to block third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. After years of testing, planning, and delays, Google scrapped a plan to turn off third-party cookie tracking by default like Safari and Firefox already do.

In other news, the annual CSS Working Group meeting wrapped up recently, and some of the exciting features the group will be focusing on this year include: the if() statement for conditional styling, cross document view transitions without the need for a JavaScript library, and (perhaps the most anticipated feature) cleaner, easier CSS anchor positioning.

Vercel introduces feature flags in Next.js and SvelteKit with Vercel’s Flags SDK. The Flags SDK works with any feature flag provider, and sits between the application and the source of the flags to help devs follow best practices for using feature flags, while keeping websites fast.

And finally, Reddit has doubled down on blocking search engine crawlers from surfacing new posts and comments in recent weeks, and as of now, Google is the only mainstream search engine that’s made a deal that will allow it to index new search results when users search for posts on Reddit.

News:

• Paige - Exciting new CSS features coming out of this year’s CSSWG meeting
• Jack - Feature Flag Support from Vercel
• TJ - Chrome’s is no longer removing third-party cookies

Bonus News:

• Reddit is now blocking all non-Google search engines and AI bots
• All the video talks from React Conf 2024 are available

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Apple Watch SE
• Jack - 3D printing (Autodesk Fusion 360 program)
• TJ - 2024 Paris Olympics

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or Tweet us on X @front_end_fire.

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