Rachel Andrew works for Google as Content Lead for Chrome DevRel working on web.dev and the Chrome for Developers site. She is a front and back-end web developer, author and speaker, author or co-author of 22 books including The New CSS Layout and a regular contributor to a number of publications both on and offline. Rachel is a Member of the CSS Working Group, and can be found posting photos of her cats on Mastodon as @rachelandrew.
It’s tempting to think of Baseline as creating a hard line. If a feature isn’t Baseline, then it’s not ready for use. However, we all know that web development is a world of “it depends”.
While we can in most cases make an objective, unopinionated call on whether something is or is not interoperable, it’s much harder to decide whether something is a good candidate for progressive enhancement. That requires an opinion, knowledge of the audience, even the exact use of the feature.
So, how should you think about using Baseline to inform your browser strategy? What about those features that have limited availability but are obvious progressive enhancements or have a great polyfill? Is there a difference between a feature that’s only in one browser and one that’s stable in two?
In this talk you’ll learn how to balance the desire for a clear line with accepting and even benefiting from the inherent messiness of the web platform.
