Web Platform Baseline: Newly available and Widely available

The Web Platform is more and more capable, and we now have more native features implemented into browsers that make our lives easier, especially given the alignment between browser vendors and feature standards.

But how do we know which features we can use as they are released by browsers? At the end of the day, despite the alignment between vendors, they each have their roadmap and implement things at their own pace.

Baseline

 This is where the concept of Baseline comes in. The Baseline was introduced in 2023, and you may have noticed it in some website like MDN or Can I Use.

So what is the Baseline? It essentially represents the set of features available on all browsers of a core set, for the last two versions.

Browser Core Set

 At the moment, the core set of browsers is made up of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. These were chosen based on their usage, but this list is subject to change as usage changes over time.

Baseline Stages

Baseline has two stages:

1. Newly Available: this is when the feature has been implemented by all the core browsers;
2. Widely Available: when a feature has been in the Newly available stage for 30 months (2.5 years), it is moved to the Widely available stage. This is when it is considered relatively safe to use in production, without having to provide browser specific alternatives.

Conclusion

So what's the conclusion?

Despite there being a lot more standards between browsers, we still need to consider when features are widely available to users.

As such, we should try to use features that are in the Baseline Widely Available stage. When that is not possible, we should provide alternatives to support browsers which have not implemented the feature yet (or haven't been updated by the user).

Additionally, we can use tools like Can I Use, which tells us the percentage of users that have access to certain features of the web platform.

At the end of the day, it's important to ensure the criteria for using a given feature is aligned with your clients, users, and team, as well as what alternatives are provided when a browser does not support that given feature.