What is Baseline? 💭
Web Platform Baseline has been around since 2023, as you can see Una Kravets talk about it at Google I/O 23 in the video below.
Baseline's purpose is to let the developers know if a new hot feature is ready to use in their project right now.
It will also help developers discover some interesting and really useful features that are already shipped in the modern browsers.
Core Browser set 🧭
Baseline includes these browsers as the core browser set. So once a feature (except limited availability feature) is in baseline, we can expect it to work in all these browser without having to check for cross-compatibility.
Chrome (desktop and Android)
Edge
Firefox (desktop and Android)
Safari (macOS and iOS)
Three stages of Baseline 🥽
- Newly Available
Newly available features are available in the latest browser versions but are still new and may not be supported by the older devices or browsers.
- Widely Available
Widely available features are well established features in all the browsers and have been available from more than 30 months ago. These are the most safe to use features from Baseline.
- Limited Availability
Limited availability shows that the feature is not yet available across all the core browsers.
Baseline Year 📅
At the end of the year, all the features that became part of the Baseline in that year are compiled together. Like https://web.dev/blog/baseline2023
Web Platform Status 📝
Baseline aims to solve the problem of developers trying to figure out a new feature and it's compatibility, interoperability and sometimes keeping track of a feature that developers would want to use but are still in development.
We can now quickly track the features at Web Platform Status dashboard. It contains the entire web platform features with their browser support and baseline stage.
Learn More 💡
Watch Rachel Andrew's talk at Google I/O '24
Hear Rachel Andrew talk about it at Smashing Podcast
Check out https://web.dev/baseline for more resources.
Thank you for reading!