Safari Technology Preview 243: Accessibility, Animation, and CSS Enhancements

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Accessibility Enhancements

This release addresses several key accessibility issues, particularly for users relying on assistive technologies like VoiceOver and keyboard navigation. The following fixes improve the experience for all users.

• Context menu in iframes – Fixed an issue where the contextmenu event was not fired for elements inside iframes when triggered by keyboard or assistive technology actions (e.g., VoiceOver’s VO+Shift+M). Bug #164128676.
• Color picker inputs – Color picker inputs can now be activated using VoiceOver’s press action, resolving a previous limitation. Bug #172218114.
• Aria-hidden invalidation – The aria-hidden="true" attribute is now properly invalidated when focus lands inside an aria-hidden subtree, ensuring assistive technology correctly reflects visibility. Bug #174449524.
• Base <select> elements – VoiceOver support has been enhanced for base <select> elements, including closing the popover on selection and correcting accessibility path positioning when CSS transforms are applied. Bug #175058883.

Animation Fixes

Animations in Safari Technology Preview 243 benefit from two critical bug fixes that ensure smoother and more predictable behavior.

• !important overrides – The browser now correctly honors !important declarations overriding CSS animation values when CSS transitions are also running on the same property. Bug #174367827.
• Transform animations – Resolved an issue where identity matrix decomposition generated invalid quaternions, leading to incorrect transform animations. Bug #174813328.

CSS Updates

New Features

• Contain: style for quote counters – Added support for contain: style applying to CSS quote counters, as specified in CSS Containment Level 2. This allows developers to limit style containment effects on generated content counters. Bug #84758186.
• Text-autospace insert keyword – The text-autospace property now supports the insert keyword, providing finer control over auto-spacing behavior in text layouts. Bug #175031507.

Resolved Issues

Several CSS layout and rendering bugs have been fixed in this release, improving cross-browser compatibility and visual fidelity.

• Flex layout definiteness – Fixed flex layout to use the used flex-basis instead of the specified value for definiteness evaluation, aligning with spec requirements. Bug #85707621.
• Positioning with anonymous blocks – Corrected an issue where element positioning was incorrect when the containing block was an anonymous block. Bug #96548847.
• Box-shadow on table-row – box-shadow now works on elements with display: table-row. Bug #96914376.
• Text-indent with calc() percentages – Fixed text-indent when using calc() containing percentages: percentage components are now treated as zero for intrinsic size contributions, preventing layout misbehavior. Bug #97025949.
• Out-of-flow fit-content height – Resolved an issue where out-of-flow content had an incorrect height when set to fit-content. Bug #97492632.
• Percentage sizing in quirks mode flex items – Fixed an issue with percentage size resolution in flex items when running in quirks mode. Bug #100183902.
• Clip-path: inset() border-radius – Corrected rendering of clip-path: inset() border-radius values at certain element and clip-path sizes. Bug #110847266.
• -webkit-box flexbox in fieldset – The legacy -webkit-box flexbox emulation now correctly sizes children inside <fieldset> elements. Bug #114094538.
• Performance of :where and :is – Improved performance on pages using :where and :is selectors, speeding up style recalculation. Bug #114904007.
• Display: table with borders – Fixed an issue where elements with display: table could have incorrect layout when borders were present. Bug #116110440.
• Border, position absolute, aspect-ratio – Resolved an issue where elements with border, position: absolute, and aspect-ratio: 1 were not rendered as squares. (Bug reference not provided in original.)

For a complete list of changes, refer to the official WebKit changelog. Safari Technology Preview continues to serve as a testing ground for upcoming WebKit features, and feedback from developers is always welcome.

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