 Rachel Andrew Technical Writer [GitHub](https://github.com/rachelandrew) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelandrew) [Mastodon](https://front-end.social/@rachelandrew) [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/rachelandrew.bsky.social) [Homepage](https://rachelandrew.co.uk)
The Chrome team had a big presence at the CSS Day conference this year. We ran
the CSS Helpdesk, answering questions from attendees, but also had a whiteboard
where we asked people what they thought was still missing from CSS. In this post
I'll share the results of asking that question, and also ask you to tell us what
you think is missing from HTML and CSS by completing
[this short survey](https://forms.gle/PnLGzcB2va1am8qu5).
Do you agree with the CSS Day attendees?
 The board of ideas at CSS Day.
## The top ten requests
Attendees were asked to write ideas on sticky notes and add them to the board.
People could also add their vote to ideas by adding a sticker. The top ten
features are as follows.
### Support for styling inputs
This was our top feature request with 21 votes. You really want ways to style
these common UI elements in a consistent way.
This is an area that we're well aware of at Chrome, as a top pain point for
developers, and there's work underway to create better solutions for developers.
For example, [customizable select elements](https://open-ui.org/components/customizableselect/)
aim to provide a
way to opt into new styling behavior. You could then do things like add images
or even more elaborate styling to options. The advantage of this approach is
that it would fallback to a regular select menu, allowing this to be a
progressive enhancement.
### Visually hidden
With 19 votes at CSS Day, this was the second most popular request. The request
is for a way to add content only used by screen readers. This might be an HTML
element, where the content is not displayed and only read out by a screen
reader.
Typically people achieve this today by creating
[a `.visually-hidden` class](https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/how-to-hide-content/)
to hide the
content but still make it accessible to screen readers.
While this is a popular request, there are people who don't think that this
should be implemented. For details read
[Visually hidden content is a hack that needs to be resolved, not enshrined](https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2023/03/21/visually-hidden-hack.html)
and this discussion on
[CSS WG issue 560](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/560).
### position: sticky inside overflow:hidden
This request received 16 votes. Currently, `position: sticky` only works when
all of the parents are `overflow: visible`.
There's [an open issue from 2017 requesting this](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/865),
and while the initial use
case of enabling the use of `overflow: hidden` for clearing floats might be less
required today, there are many other scenarios detailed in the thread.
### Animate to `height: auto`
At 12 votes, many attendees wanted to animate to `height: auto`. We're happy to
be able to say that this is coming to the web platform with
[the CSS `interpolate-size` property and `calc-size()` function](https://chromestatus.com/feature/5196713071738880).
These will be available from Chrome 129.
Look out for a future post with more information about these.
### Additional input types
HTML5 brought you many different
[types for the `` element](https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input#input_types)---for
example `type="email"` for an email address or `type="range"` for a range slider.
At CSS Day we got 10 votes for more of these types, for example, double range,
or autocomplete with custom datalist.
### Real random numbers in CSS
Another request with 10 votes was for real random numbers in CSS. This has been
requested and worked round in the past for a random
[animation-duration](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/missing-from-css/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bhttps:/css-tricks.com/random-numbers-css).
### Mixin style classes
CSS has added a number of features previously seen in CSS
preprocessors---variables with custom properties, and now CSS Nesting. Reusable
mixins however, haven't yet become part of the language, but seven of the CSS
Day attendees were keen to see them.
There has been a
[CSS Working Group resolution](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/9350#issuecomment-1939628591)
to start working on a specification for this feature, and you can add your
thoughts and use cases to the discussion in that issue.
### Global styles in shadow DOM
Another issue that has a large discussion thread of use cases is the request to
allow global CSS styles to apply inside a shadow DOM, six people asked for this
at CSS Day. This capability would allow global reset styles to also apply in web
components, and single CSS files to work across all components of a site. Take a
look at
[this summary of use cases](https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents/issues/1052#issuecomment-2087900638),
and let us know if this is a feature you'd also like to have.
### Dividing mixed units
There was [a proposal for Interop 2024](https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop/issues/513)
requesting the
ability to divide by mixed units---for example `calc(100vw / 1px)`. It was deemed
too broad for Interop 2024, however many developers, including six people at CSS
Day, would like to see this implemented.
### `nth-letter`
CSS has a number of pseudo-elements that act as if you had wrapped a span around
some section of content. For example, the
[`::first-letter`](https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/CSS/::first-letter)
pseudo-element targets the first letter of the first line of the block container
it's applied to.
Missing from that list is `::nth-letter`, and you've been asking for
`::nth-letter` for [about twenty years](https://adactio.com/journal/14408), so
we know this is a long-time ask from web developers. At CSS Day six people voted
for this, making it the last of our top ten wanted features.
## Do you agree with the CSS Day top ten?
We would love to hear from a broader audience about these issues, do any of
these make your top ten? If not, is there something else you would love to see
in CSS and HTML? Let us know by filling out
[this short form](https://forms.gle/PnLGzcB2va1am8qu5)
and we'll summarize the responses in another post.