Baseline gives you clear information about which web platform features are safe to use in your projects today. When reading an article, or choosing a library for your project, if the features used are all part of Baseline, you can trust the level of browser compatibility. By aligning with Baseline, there should be no surprises when testing your site.
Baseline and Google Chrome
Baseline is a project originated by a team at Chrome. Through our research we'd learned that many developers found changes to the web platform confusing. In particular, you told us it was a challenge understanding which features were supported in all browsers.
When talking to developers we realized that until fairly recently many of you used Internet Explorer as a baseline for browser support. The site needed to work in IE11, therefore you would only use features supported in IE11. With Internet Explorer going away, and browsers on ever-faster release cycles aligning to particular browser versions became much harder.
Therefore Baseline was designed to be a line showing when features could be deemed ready to use, based on being available across all browsers. The line wouldn't be tied to any particular browser version, but instead based on interoperability.
A collaboration with other browsers and the community
For Baseline to become the way we talk about availability, we knew it couldn't just be a Chrome project. It needed input and alignment from other browsers and the community. Therefore we quickly moved the project to the ownership of the W3C WebDX Community Group. This group decided on the definition of Baseline, and also hosts the work to define the web platform as a set of features.
Anyone is welcome to join the WebDX Community Group and contribute to discussions about Baseline, the web features work, and other issues relating to developer experience.
We're excited to continue to drive this project, in collaboration with the community. On web.dev, expect to find information about how to use Baseline in your workflow, and information about the features becoming part of Baseline each month.