[ljoshua]

The challenge till this is widely supported (caniuse.com currently pegs it at 46% globally [1]) will be using this as a progressive enhancement that does not provide a worse or unusable experience for users with browsers not supporting it yet.

In other words, don’t include critical information or functionality in the new styling that isn’t available in the underlying plain select element! But such is always a good practice anyway.

Very nice to see this taking shape though! Should be a huge improvement over the div monster that custom select box replacements often are. :)

[1] https://caniuse.com/mdn-css_properties_appearance_base-selec...

[ddoolin]

I agree that this is a huge improvement, but it's also over a decade late IMO. This should've been accomplished well before now, especially given that the issue has been there since the beginning.

[pclmulqdq]

Because frontend is frontend, Javascript frameworks dominated the conversation even for silly things like basic web forms for the past 15 years. Basic HTML/CSS is now catching up to the fact that not everyone wants to run a Javascript monstrosity for custom styling on very basic tasks.

[ksec]

Over TWO decades late.

It is crazy to think what we only just have in anything non JavaScript in the past 20 years.

[Cthulhu_]

It's like how border-radius was added after rounded corners via images fell out of fashion.

[true_religion]

I somehow feel Safari drags its feet on basic things platform improvements because they want to focus on iOS apps instead.

[paddy_m]

This is true, and I try not to get eager about new browser improvements for this reason. But look at the porgress over time in browser abilities, it's astounding.

The days are long but the years are short.

[no_wizard]

The perpetual 5 year problem of web development. I wish there was a way to do forward standards

[bsimpson]

> But such is always a good practice anyway.

One more reminder to develop for people who may not perceive color and shape as you do. If you're hiding critical information in your menu styles, that information is presumably inaccessible to people who are using a screen reader.

[simiones]

You'll probably still keep a <div>-based control in your page, and selectively hide the <select> based one or this one, or generate different HTML for different browsers if you can do that.

[klysm]

This might be a bad take, but I think developers should also consider exactly which users are using their app. If it’s the entire internet, then absolutely you need to consider backwards compatibility. If it’s an internal app, then consider not caring and using new APIs.