What’s !important #3: Popover Context Menus, @scope, New Web Platform Features, and More

ByEditor

The developer community has kicked off 2026 with some great articles, demos, and insights. Firefox 147 and Chrome 144 were released, offering excitement during a normally slow time of year. Here’s what’s important from the first couple of weeks of 2026:

**Building Popover Context Menus with Anchor Positioning**
Chris Coyier shows how to build context menus using popovers and anchor positioning at Frontend Masters. Topics include interest invokers, `

`, discrete transitions, `@starting-style`, and fallback positions. Anchor positioning went baseline this week, making it available for production websites.

**Scoping CSS with `@scope`**
I wrote about `@scope` for Frontend Masters. Firefox’s final release of the year made it baseline, making it my feature of the year. I’m excited to start 2026 with a how-to on using `@scope` and scoping CSS.

**Generating Gradient Borders from an Image Source**
Ana Tudor demonstrates how to blur an image and mask it with a border on Bluesky. Safari can achieve this with three lines of CSS, but a cross-browser solution is also available. The effect is adaptable for other scenarios.

**You Probably Don’t Need Tabs**
HTML is so good now. Stephen Margheim argues that tab components are often over-engineered and suggests alternatives.

**Using Your OS as a CMS**
Jim Nielsen introduces an OS-as-a-CMS concept, showing how “Edit Post” buttons on his website open local documents in iA Writer, eliminating the need for a CMS. This can be integrated into an Eleventy build.

**Quick Hits and New Web Platform Features**
We post Quick Hits throughout the week, featuring links to read in a minute or two or PSAs to remember. Here’s what you might’ve missed:

A mini Mario world with keyboard control is available on CodePen, created by T. Afif using 100% CSS, minimal HTML, and no JavaScript. It’s a Chrome-only experiment using modern CSS.

Here are my top picks from what Firefox and Chrome shipped on Tuesday:

Thanks for tuning in. See you in two weeks! Be there or be square (`aspect-ratio: 1`)!

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