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Baseline in five minutes

What “Newly available” actually means

Every issue of Cleared hangs off three words: Limited, Newly, Widely. They come from Baseline, a status system run by the WebDX Community Group. Here is the whole thing in about five minutes.

The three states

The three statuses

Limited availability
At least one major browser does not support the feature. It might be shipping in three of them and stuck in a standards discussion in the fourth. Either way, using it means writing a fallback.
Newly available
Every browser in the core set supports it, in their current stable release. The feature works everywhere, right now, in an up-to-date browser.
Widely available
Thirty months have passed since it went Newly available. Old browsers have aged out of circulation. You can use it without thinking about it.

The core set is seven browsers: Chrome on desktop and Android, Firefox on desktop and Android, Safari on macOS and iOS, and Edge on desktop. That is the whole list. Baseline says nothing about Internet Explorer, embedded webviews, or browsers outside that set.

The clock

The clock

The date a feature goes Newly available is the release date of the last core browser to ship it. Baseline calls this the keystone date, and everything else is measured from it.

Widely available is that date plus 30 months. No committee vote, no usage threshold, just arithmetic. There is one extra condition: the current Firefox ESR release (Extended Support Release, the slow-moving version organisations install and leave alone for a year) also has to support it, which occasionally holds a feature back a few weeks past the 30-month mark.

Thirty months is not a scientific constant. It is the project’s estimate of how long it takes for browser updates to reach nearly everyone, and it is deliberately conservative.

The useful consequence: the Widely available list for any future month is already fixed. Whatever went Newly available in January 2024 clears in July 2026. Nothing can change it. That is half of what Cleared covers each month, and it is the half that lets you delete code. Next year’s deletions are already knowable.

Here is the calendar

The fine print

What Newly available does not mean

It means every current browser supports it. It does not mean every browser your visitors are running supports it. Someone on a two-year-old phone that stopped getting updates does not have it.

So Newly available is a decision, not a green light. If the feature degrades quietly, use it today. If the page breaks without it, wait, or ship a fallback until it goes Widely.

Two more limits worth knowing. Baseline does not cover screen readers or other assistive technology outside the browser. And it does not cover implementation quality: a browser can support a feature technically and still have bugs in it.

Moving backwards

Features can move backwards

Baseline is a live reading, not a stamp. If a browser pulls support, or the spec picks up a deprecation notice, a feature can lose its status. This is rare. It is also why Cleared re-checks every number against the source data before an issue goes out, rather than reusing what was true last month.

Questions

The questions people actually search

Is newly available safe to use?

It means every browser in the core set supports the feature in its current stable release. It does not mean every browser your visitors are running supports it: someone on a two-year-old phone that stopped getting updates does not have it. So newly available is a decision, not a green light. If the feature degrades quietly, use it today. If the page breaks without it, wait, or ship a fallback until it goes widely available.

What does widely available mean?

That thirty months have passed since the feature went newly available. Old browsers have aged out of circulation, and you can use it without thinking about it.

How long does a feature take to become widely available?

Thirty months from the keystone date, which is the release date of the last core browser to ship it. No committee vote, no usage threshold, just arithmetic. There is one extra condition: the current Firefox ESR release also has to support it, which occasionally holds a feature back a few weeks past the 30-month mark.

Does Baseline cover Internet Explorer or webviews?

No. The core set is seven browsers: Chrome on desktop and Android, Firefox on desktop and Android, Safari on macOS and iOS, and Edge on desktop. Baseline says nothing about Internet Explorer, embedded webviews, or browsers outside that set. It also says nothing about screen readers and other assistive technology outside the browser, or about implementation quality.

Can a feature lose Baseline status?

Yes. Baseline is a live reading, not a stamp: if a browser pulls support, or the spec picks up a deprecation notice, a feature can lose its status. This is rare. It is also why Cleared re-checks every number against the source data before an issue goes out, rather than reusing what was true last month.

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