Notifications for Web Platform Status Changes
The Web Platform Status dashboard already marks features with their Baseline status, helping developers gauge interoperability. The catch: you had to keep checking the dashboard manually to notice when a feature crossed into Baseline territory. The new Baseline Alerts feature removes that burden by sending notifications about the features you follow, shortening the gap between a feature becoming interoperable and you actually adopting it.
Setting Up Subscriptions
To use Baseline Alerts, sign in with your GitHub account. Once authenticated, a Subscriptions button appears. You can subscribe at different scopes:
- All features, from the home page.
- An individual feature page, such as JPEG XL.
- A saved search page, such as one for all CSS features.
The Subscriptions dialog handles notification type and frequency:
Subscriptions fire an email or update a custom RSS feed when a feature:
- Becomes Widely available
- Becomes Newly available
- Gets a new browser implementation
- Regresses to limited availability
You can choose to receive digests monthly, weekly, or on every status change. Manage existing subscriptions from the Subscriptions menu item.
Practical Uses Beyond Alerts
Build a Personalized Feed
Because subscriptions can target specific features, you can assemble a custom newsletter. For instance, filter HTML features with the group:html query and save that search.
After saving, you'll be able to subscribe to updates for all features in that result set.
In this example, you'd receive an alert every time any HTML feature becomes Baseline Newly or Widely available. The dashboard's query language supports more than just groups; save any query as a custom feature set for notifications. Details are in the query grammar documentation.
Shareable Feature Lists
Saved searches are shareable, both via direct URL and QR code. Click the share icon on a saved search page to generate them. Content creators and conference speakers can point audiences at a curated feature list, giving viewers a direct way to track the technologies being showcased.
Slack Integration
Baseline Alerts can post updates to a Slack channel through a webhook. Under Notification channels in the left-hand menu, find the Webhook section. Add a Slack webhook URL, name it, and then select it as a notification target when subscribing to features.
Future plans include extending webhook support to other services, such as creating GitHub issues.
Trying Baseline Alerts
Baseline Alerts are designed to speed up discovery of interoperable features, letting you start development with them earlier. For questions or suggestions, file an issue on the webstatus.dev GitHub repository.
