April 2025 was a busy month for the Baseline project. In this digest I’ll highlight what’s new and why these changes matter to everyday developers.

A quick refresher on Baseline

Baseline is a simple way of telling whether a feature in HTML, CSS or JavaScript is broadly supported. Instead of guessing which browsers implement a property or API, you check its Baseline status. If it’s in the Baseline, you can confidently use it without worrying about breaking your users’ experience.

Newly available features

Two notable features became Baseline Newly available in April:

• Float16Array, a typed array that stores 16‑bit floating point numbers. Typed arrays are useful for graphics work and WebGPU, and the new Float16Array means you can pack data more compactly.
• Single‑color‑stop gradients, which simplify CSS gradient definitions and make it easier to define subtle background blends.

Widely available features

Two features moved into the Widely available category:

• Animation support for grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows. You can now animate your grid layouts directly via CSS.
• The CSS ic unit, which scales typographic measurements based on the width of the “ic” glyph (commonly used for Chinese and Japanese text).

Tooling improvements

One of the biggest pieces of news is that support for Baseline landed in Visual Studio Code Insiders. When you hover over CSS rules or HTML elements, tooltips tell you if a feature is part of the Baseline. This helps you avoid unsupported features while you type. The integration is coming to the stable version of VS Code and will also roll out to other VS Code‑based editors.

There’s also a new plugin for Stylelint. The stylelint‑plugin‑use‑baseline rule works similarly to ESLint’s rule but is built for developers who prefer Stylelint for linting CSS. The plugin warns you when you use CSS properties that aren’t part of the Baseline, helping to ensure cross‑browser compatibility.

On the ESLint side, the use‑baseline rule has been updated. You can now specify a particular Baseline year (instead of just “newly” or “widely”), lint selectors for Baseline compliance, and catch usage of additional CSS functions like color‑mix and conic‑gradient. By default, the rule issues warnings rather than errors, though you can configure it to be stricter.

Browserslist integration

Modern build tools such as PostCSS and Babel rely on Browserslist queries to determine which syntax to emit. The browserslist‑config‑baseline package, released in April, converts a Baseline target (for example, widely available or Baseline 2024) into a valid Browserslist query. This means you can tell your toolchain to target the Baseline and automatically ship only the code that your chosen baseline requires. It’s a huge win for performance and bundle size.

Wrap‑up

April’s digest shows that Baseline is maturing quickly. With new features graduating into the Baseline and deeper integration into editors and tooling, it’s becoming easier to build modern, robust websites without worrying about browser quirks. Keep an eye on future digests—especially with Google I/O around the corner.

Source: web.dev — Baseline monthly digest (April 2025)

Category: Web News