The script standardized by Qin Shi Huang has now been officially encoded. Unicode 18.0 was released last week, adding 13,007 characters to bring the total to more than 170,000. Of these new additions, 11,328 are Small Seal characters.

Today marks the 38th anniversary of Joe Becker's landmark document *Unicode 88*, the manifesto that first laid out the principles of a universal character encoding. Thirty-eight years later, the work continues. Happy anniversary, Unicode!

Native CSS modules are coming to WebKit!! github.com/WebKit/WebKi... WebKit is the last major browser engine to add support, so we'll get to baseline support soon. Servo supports them too 😎

Implement CSS module scripts by tuankiet65 · Pull Request #72110 · WebKit/WebKit

32d0e5b Implement CSS module scripts rdar://80917329 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227967 Reviewed by NOBODY (OOPS!). This patch implements importing CSS stylesheets as JavaScript modul...

github.com

The agenda for the "E-commerce for Humans and AI Agents" workshop has been announced: www.w3.org/2026/ecommer...

Agenda

W3C/GS1 Workshop on E-commerce for Humans and AI Agents, 8-9 September 2026, Zurich and online.

w3.org

FOR REVIEW: How can I use language metadata in native APIs? w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/... (temporary URL) This article contains pointers to native APIs for applying language metadata to strings and text ranges. We are looking for comments by Friday 18 December, 2026.

Eemeli Aro talks about "DOM Localization" at the Web Engines Hackfest 2026 www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuyI...

if you understand Chinese, this @thetype.com episode covering the Yi script and Yi people is really worth a listen. www.thetype.com/typechat/ep-...

What should your app return if it supports 20 languages ​​and a user sets their system language to "French (Switzerland)", but you only support `fr-FR` / `fr`? Returning an English fallback might cause you to lose that user.

REFRESHED! Ruby Styling Offers practical guidance for content authors on how to style ruby annotations in line with the CSS Ruby specification. This article was updated to include recent developments, and add information on ruby-overhang and the ruby-position:alternate value.

Using a website in your own language and it just didn’t work properly? That’s the kind of problem we work on at W3C. We keep a Project Radar so everyone can see what the i18n activity is tackling right now: closing gaps in language support, reviewing standards, and building education resources.

New translation into Chinese: 管理中文和日文中的行内空白 (Managing inline spaces in Chinese & Japanese) www.w3.org/Internationa...

I'm leading W3C's Internationalization efforts. Our Working Group helps ensure HTML, CSS, Unicode, and web standards support every script and language properly. Want to get involved?

W3C and GS1 to Jointly Host a Workshop on E-commerce Technologies for Humans and AI Agents Date: September 8–9, 2026 Location: Zurich, Switzerland (remote participation supported) If you are involved in e-commerce, AI agents, web standards, or related fields... welcome to share your experiences.

🫰🤬💰 What most annoys you about #payments on the #web? I want your opinion as a dev, customer, merchant, framework author - all of it. What causes you to get part way through a purchase and then just give up? 🔁 Casting a wide net, so share away! Feel free to message if you don't want to comment!

The State of CSS 2026 survey is out! These survey's are a huge signal to the browser makers on what people want, and the more people fill the out, the better that information is. survey.devographics.com/en-US/survey...

State of CSS 2026

Take the State of CSS survey

survey.devographics.com

PUBLISHED! Managing inline spaces in Chinese & Japanese www.w3.org/Internationa... This article looks at ways of using CSS to add gaps between certain types of text, to reduce gaps between punctuation marks, and to manage paragraph-initial spacing.

FOR REVIEW: Managing inline spaces in Chinese & Japanese w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/... (temporary URL)

Happy 18th anniversary to the first draft of JLReq! 🎉

Use of Large Language Models in Standards Work is a Group Note on when LLMs can accelerate our work and when they create real risks. Must-read for anyone using AI in Web standards.

The new charter for the International Working Group has been adopted. We welcome everyone to join or rejoin the group.

We've recently added automated testing to our i18n articles. From now on, before publishing, we'll automatically check common issues such as wrong language tags, date formats, and invalid markup.

A NEW VERSION of Requirements for Hangul Text Layout and Typography 한국어 텍스트 레이아웃 및 타이포그래피를 위한 요구사항 has been published. www.w3.org/TR/klreq/

I built a CLI that validates and explains BCP 47 language tags: www.npmjs.com/package/bcp4...

I've recently been trying to create some CJK layout examples. They're still very basic and have many areas for improvement (such as more examples, multilingual support, more info about browser support, dark mode, display the underlying code, etc.). Link: xfq.github.io/cjk-layout-l...

Over 1,000 people in one Chinese village were forced to change their surnames, because computers couldn't type them. This isn't a tech curiosity. It's a barrier to bank accounts, train tickets, and ID cards. My latest on why character encoding is an ethical imperative: dev.to/xfq/the-ethi...

Many people have forgotten Tim Berners-Lee's article "Cool URIs don't change", which emphasizes that links should be designed to be persistent. It suggests avoiding elements that are prone to change in links to ensure their long-term validity.

“Westerners get used to this so-called ‘modern’ design, and they think everything should be like this. But when they put it into the CJK background, they found everything was different.” www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/12...

Why Japan’s internet looks weird — unless you live here

A closer look at Japan’s maximalist web design shows how cultural values and practical needs create an online world richer than it appears.

japantimes.co.jp

Unicode 18.0 (to be released in September 2026) will include 11,328 Small Seal Script characters, which is the set of characters standardized by Qin Shi Huang during the "standardizing writing" movement. In addition, Unicode 18 will also add 965 Jurchen characters.

The updated version of clreq published today supports extra spacing between Chinese and Western text: www.w3.org/TR/clreq/

“Each user agent serves its user, not any of the other constituencies.” says the @tag.w3c.social.ap.brid.gy in their latest Group Note Draft on user agents www.w3.org/TR/2025/DNOT...