WP Tavern #178 – Adam Silverstein Explores Transformative Browser Features Impacting WordPress Sites
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Jul 23, 2025 Adam Silverstein, a WordPress core committer and developer relations engineer at Google, shares how emerging browser APIs are reshaping the WordPress experience. He discusses innovations like the Popover API, CSS carousels, and speculative loading that enhance accessibility and performance. Adam also delves into modern image formats, browser-based AI, and the importance of collaboration among browser vendors. His insights are invaluable for developers and site owners eager to leverage these transformative features for a better web experience.
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Popover API Simplifies UI
- The Popover API allows creating accessible popovers with minimal code and no heavy JavaScript.
- It automates positioning, accessibility features, and interaction complexities natively in the browser.
Browser Collaboration on Standards
- Browser vendors have cooperated through Interop initiatives to standardize APIs across all browsers.
- Baseline features indicate APIs reliably supported by all major browsers, enabling consistent development.
Speculative Loading Speeds Navigation
- The speculative loading API in WordPress 6.8 prefetches resources on mouse down to speed page navigation.
- More aggressive prefetch modes can improve speed but increase server load, requiring trade-offs.