Chrome 137, which reached stable in late May 2025, added the CSS if() function. It lets a stylesheet choose a value based on a condition, checking a custom property, a media query, or feature support, and returning the first match. Work that used to require JavaScript or a preprocessor like Sass can now live in one line of plain CSS.
In practice this means things like light and dark variants, or a component that restyles itself based on a setting, can be expressed directly where the value is used, instead of scattered across separate rules.
For a small or mid-size business, this is a behind-the-scenes efficiency, not a feature you'll see. It's early, so support is still landing in Firefox and Safari and your developer will keep a fallback for now. But it points the same direction as recent CSS work: less JavaScript, fewer moving parts, and pages that load faster and break less often. Worth a mention next time your site is due for maintenance.
Further reading: original source ↗
Want this handled for you?
This is exactly the kind of thing our website development work takes off your plate. Start with a free, no-pressure look at your site.
Come aboard