Introducing Baseline: ship modern web features with confidence

You want to ship native lazyloading or popovers to get rid of JavaScript and improve INP. And rather sooner than later. But there's a challenge: how to know if all of your users are ready for that feature?
Baseline, a browser-wide initiative tracking 1000+ web features, is changing this. And with RUMvision's Baseline integration, you know exactly when your real visitors are ready for shipping modern features.

  • by Erwin Hofman
  • Published
  • Reading time ± 4 minutes
  • Baseline RUMvision
Introducing Baseline: ship modern web features with confidence

During the last Google I/O, RUMvision was mentioned multiple times. One of them was related to Baseline adoption. Today, after a soft launch, we're opening up our RUM Baseline tracking for everyone.

TL;DR

Who needs this?
Development teams that are actively adopting modern web features for faster websites and better user experience in general.

When it matters:
When you need up-to-date insights on which feature is supported in the browser versions of your visitors. Those insights are not only convenient, but risk-averse if your site deploys new features frequently or plans a significant frontend update or replatforming.

Business value:

  • Prioritize feature adoption with confidence
  • Reduced development costs by removing unnecessary fallbacks
  • Data-driven decisions about browser support
  • Better experience for most of your visitors

Easy start:
One tracking snippet to immediate insights into your actual users. If you're already using RUMvision for Core Web Vitals monitoring, you can already use it today.

Checking browser compatibility today

We recently conducted a public poll asking "Where do you go before considering/implementing WEBP, lazyloading, Speculation Rules?" The results were telling:

  • caniuse.com: 73%
  • MDN docs: 13%
  • Baseline: 10%
  • if it works on my machine: 3%

The caniuse.com challenge

The dominance of caniuse.com isn't surprising. Your developers probably spent hours on caniuse.com, digging through compatibility tables and reading bug reports. It's a manual process that can lead to conservative implementation decisions because they weren't quite sure about edge cases. We've all been there.

Why Baseline is different

Baseline changes this vulnerable approach with clear, unambiguous signals:

  • Widely Available (Green badge)
    The feature should be truly ready to ship as it is supported by all major browsers since at least 30 months.
  • Newly available (Blue badge)
    The feature became supported across all major browsers within the last 30 months.
  • Limited Availability (Orange badge)
    The feature is still rolling out across browsers.

These signals mean no more decoding compatibility notes or wondering about edge cases. When a feature gets the blue Baseline status, it means exactly what you hope: it works across all major browsers, period.

However, there's a catch: while a feature like AVIF might work in the latest browser versions, what about your actual users? Are they running those latest versions? This is where RUMvision fills a crucial gap – by showing you exactly what percentage of your real visitors are on browsers that support each feature. No more guessing about version adoption among your users.

Your real users might be ready today

While Baseline's 30-month timeline for "Widely Available" status provides a safe global benchmark, your actual users might be ready much sooner. This is where RUMvision's Baseline integration makes a crucial difference.

Instead of waiting for global adoption, you can see exactly when your audience is ready:

  • "98% of your users already support Container Queries"
  • "View Transitions are now supported by 95% of your mobile visitors"
  • "You can safely remove fallbacks for your AVIF images for 99% of your users"

If you can't wait using this and want to see more on our implementation, jump to our help-center article covering our Baseline implementation.

This real-user data enables confident decisions about:

  • Removing IntersectionObserver polyfills
  • Dropping JavaScript lazy-loading fallbacks
  • Retiring legacy image format fallbacks
  • Implementing cutting-edge CSS features

Making feature decisions easier

Every feature in your dashboard gets a clear recommendation based on your actual visitor data:

  • "Ready to implement without fallbacks"
  • "Consider removing existing fallbacks"
  • "Keep fallbacks for 5% of your users"
  • "Monitor for increased support"

Our trend tracking helps you spot growing support, ensuring you know exactly when to implement new features or remove legacy fallbacks.

Real-world benefits

This data-driven approach delivers tangible benefits:

1. Faster feature adoption

  • Implement new features as soon as your users support them
  • No more waiting for "just to be safe" periods

2. Reduced technical debt

  • Remove unnecessary polyfills with confidence
  • Clean up legacy fallback code
  • Streamline your codebase

3. Better performance

  • Smaller bundle sizes by removing unused fallbacks
  • Native feature implementation instead of polyfills
  • Optimized assets for modern browsers

4. Development efficiency

  • Clear, actionable data for feature decisions
  • No more manual browser compatibility research
  • Confident feature implementation planning

Getting started

There's never been a bad time to start understanding your users' browser capabilities. The longer you wait, the longer you might be:

  • Building up technical debt
  • By maintaining unnecessary fallbacks
  • Holding back on performance improvements
  • Missing opportunities to simplify your codebase

Browser vendors are shipping new features continuously. Your development team is eager to implement them, while you want to stay ahead of technical debt. Baseline insights by RUMvision answers both needs: developers get clear signals about when to implement features, while you can confidently clean up legacy code and fallbacks based on your actual user data.

Getting started is simple:

  1. Subscribe to our Baseline plan (or any other plan if you want to include Core Web Vitals tracking)
  2. Add the RUMvision tracking snippet to your site
  3. Wait for some data to come in
  4. Navigate to your tailored Baseline dashboard
  5. Watch your support trends grow over time for new or older features
  6. And make data-driven feature decisions regarding implementation

Ready to make browser support decisions with confidence? Start collecting data today and see what features your users are ready for.

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