CSS Goes Native; iRobot Restructures; Tools and Practices to Ship Better Software
NEWSLETTER | Amplifi Labs
CSS Wrapped 2025: Native selects, state queries, JS-free carousels
Smashing Magazine • December 9, 2025
CSS Wrapped 2025 spotlights native UI and logic in CSS: fully styleable selects via appearance: base-select and ::picker(select) with <selectedcontent>, JS-free carousels using ::scroll-marker/::scroll-button and scroll-marker-group, and new scroll-state container queries (Chrome 133) to detect sticky/snapped state. Ergonomics bring inline conditionals with if(), reusable @function, and sibling-index()/sibling-count() for list-aware layouts/animations, plus upcoming anchored container queries, nested view transitions (view-transition-group: nearest), text-box-trim, corner-shape/shape(), and typed attr()—reducing JS, improving performance, and shifting architecture toward CSS-first patterns. Many features are Chrome-first or experimental; ship with @supports and progressive enhancement and watch Interop for cross-browser parity.
Industry & Platform Shifts
iRobot Files Chapter 11 as Chinese Supplier PICEA Takes Control
Around the web •December 15, 2025
Roomba-maker iRobot filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware and proposed transferring control to its main supplier, Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co., with common shareholders wiped out under the plan. For developers and smart‑home partners, the ownership shift could impact device support lifecycles, APIs/SDKs, cloud endpoints, and data policies—monitor integration roadmaps and service continuity commitments.
Developer Experience & Code Intelligence
Arborium: Native and WASM Tree-sitter highlighting for 96 languages
Around the web •December 15, 2025
Arborium packages hand-picked Tree-sitter 0.26 grammars with working highlight queries as Rust crates and WebAssembly, delivering context-aware highlighting beyond regex tokenizers and outputting semantic HTML (no JS required) or 24‑bit ANSI for terminals. Developers can use the v2 crate with per-language feature flags or load via CDN/npm, with integrations for rustdoc, miette diagnostics, and static-site tooling. A custom sysroot supplies libc/dlmalloc for wasm32-unknown-unknown and an optimized pipeline (build-std, wasm-bindgen, wasm-opt), though each grammar embeds the full runtime, increasing bundle size.
Data & Infrastructure Performance
Stop Using UUIDv4 Primary Keys in Postgres; Use Bigint or UUIDv7
Around the web •December 15, 2025
UUIDv4 primary keys degrade Postgres performance: their randomness triggers page splits and fragmentation, yields ~40% larger B-tree indexes, and in reproduced tests drove ~31k% more buffer hits versus bigint—slowing inserts, lookups, and updates. For OLTP apps, prefer sequence-backed bigint IDs; if globally unique, client-safe IDs are required, use time-ordered UUIDv7 (coming in Postgres 18, available via pg_uuidv7 today), and if stuck on v4, mitigate with periodic reindexing/pg_repack, tuned shared_buffers/work_mem, alternative implicit ordering (e.g., created_at), or clustering.
UX & Accessibility Practices
Practical Playbook for Inclusive UX Research: eBook Available Now
Smashing Magazine •December 9, 2025
Smashing released the eBook of “Accessible UX Research” by Dr. Michele A. Williams, a 320-page, end-to-end guide to planning, recruiting, facilitating, and analyzing inclusive studies that integrate disabled participants across all research phases. Aimed at teams moving beyond checkbox compliance, it provides assistive-technology primers, disability etiquette, and bias-aware research methods to embed accessibility into everyday product work. Available in PDF, ePub, and Kindle now; the hardcover is in presale and ships in early 2026.
