Tailwind Weekly #188: Tailwind CSS v4.1 Adds Text Shadows, Mask Utilities, and lots more 🚀!

Hello folks!

Sorry for the silence for the past 2 weeks, I was recovering from surgery but feeling much better now and excited to get back to our regular schedule!

This week, we got v4.1 with lots of new additions, and the announcement video is a MUST WATCH if you want the highlights of the release. Also, the thumbnail is hilarious 😂.

Let's dive in!

🌟 News

Say hello to Tailwind CSS v4.1!

Here’s a TL;DR straight from the blog post:

• New text-shadow-* utilities — only about twenty years after they were first supported by a browser.

• Mask elements with the mask-* utilities — use images and gradients to mask elements with new ergonomic APIs.

• Improved compatibility with older browsers — we've made things degrade way more gracefully for older browsers, while still taking advantage of modern features in browsers that support them.

• Fine-grained text wrapping with overflow-wrap — defend the integrity of your layouts from even the longest German words your users will throw at you.

• Colored drop-shadow support — can't really remember why we didn't have these before but we do now.

• Target input devices with pointer-* and any-pointer-* — tweak your design for touch devices explicitly instead of relying on viewport size.

• Align items to the last baseline — align flex or grid items to the baseline of the last line of text using the new items-baseline-last and self-baseline-last utilities.

• Keep content visible with safe alignment — center content in flex and grid layouts without it disappearing when there's not enough space.

• Ignore specific paths with @source not — explicitly ignore irrelevant large directories and speed up your builds even more.

• Safelist specific utilities with @source inline(…) — force Tailwind to include classes that aren't in your source files.

• A bunch of other new variants — including noscript, user-valid, inverted-colors, and more.

🤩 Windy Picks

🚀 Master Tailwind CSS Faster & Smarter! 🚀

Struggling to master the full power of Tailwind CSS? Sure, the basics are easy, but hidden tips, advanced workflows, and nuanced flexibility? That’s where Level up with Tailwind CSS v4 shines. 🌟

Authored by the global conference speaker and educator Shruti Balasa (creator of 30+ popular Tailwind tutorials), this guide takes you from beginner to pro with real-world examples, creative techniques, and time-saving tricks. Available as:

✨ eBook ($33): Dive deep with sample codes & demos.
🎥 eBook + Videos ($59): Hands-on visuals for faster learning.

Start your Tailwind mastery today!

📚 Learning

7 Practical CSS Typography Tips & Tricks

The creator walks through practical typography tricks like fluid sizing with clamp(), perfectly balanced text lines, custom underline styling, and even emoji bullet points that actually look professional. What I love most is seeing the real-time transformation in their CodePen demo - you immediately understand how just a few lines of CSS can dramatically improve readability and visual appeal.

Our Favorite DevTools Features of 2025

This post dives into eight fantastic features that are game-changers for optimizing and debugging your sites in 2025. From pinpointing those complicated performance bottlenecks caused by large DOM trees to distinguishing between first-party and third-party scripts with ease, this article covers it all. You'll learn how to test your site sans third-party cookies, simulate real-world device conditions with calibrated CPU throttling, and even get AI-powered insights to decipher those daunting flame charts.

Responsive Animations for Every Screen Size and Device

This one dives into the world of responsive animation, offering insights into how to adapt your animations for various devices without "export settings" like in video graphics. You'll learn about different animation types—fixed, fluid, and targeted—and how each requires a unique approach. The piece is packed with practical tips, like leveraging SVG units for responsive scaling and using GSAP's FLIP technique to create seamless transitions.

💅 Showcase

Codecourse

Codecourse is the go-to library of practical screencasts for developers who want to build real applications without wading through theory, featuring hundreds of project-based tutorials across Laravel, Livewire, Vue, and other modern frameworks.

🎁 Resource

The Ultimate PaaS Pricing Comparison Calculator

I discovered this super helpful tool last week and had to share it! It's a calculator that lets you compare pricing across different Platform-as-a-Service providers like Heroku, Render, Fly, and Railway by inputting your team size, CPU needs, memory requirements, and more. What I love about it is how it breaks down all the costs in detail, showing you exactly where your money goes for each provider. If you're trying to figure out the most cost-efficient place to host your app or planning infrastructure costs for a new project, this is definitely going to save you hours of research.

👌 Cool Stuff

Game & Word – Where gaming meets humanity, exploring the intersection of games, arts, and sciences for both gamers and non-gamers alike.

The 5-9 Formula – Weekly interviews with successful side hustlers, delivering actionable business advice in a 5-minute read for aspiring entrepreneurs.

On Repeat Records – A personalized music discovery newsletter delivering hand-curated playlists straight to your inbox, bypassing algorithms for genuine recommendations.

Scouting German Football – In-depth analysis covering all tiers of German football, providing fresh perspectives beyond mainstream narratives of top Bundesliga clubs.

Do you want to share something with the Tailwind CSS community?
You can submit a link or message me on Twitter @vivgui.

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