base element and relative references

Hi all,

I tested relative references in the base element in a few browsers and
got different results. Suppose the following file is at
http://example.com/test.html:

<base href="google.com/foo/">
...
<a href="bar.html">link</a>

When you click on the link, MSIE tries http://google.com/foo/bar.html

Firefox tries http://example.com/bar.html

Chrome and Opera try http://example.com/google.com/foo/bar.html

On the other hand, when the file does not contain a base element:

<a href="google.com/foo/">link</a>

MSIE, Firefox and Chrome all try http://example.com/google.com/foo/

So these browsers are consistent when the relative reference is in an
<a> element, but in the <base> element, their behavior is quite
different. The HTML 5 spec seems to indicate that the href in a base
element can be a relative reference.

Was this decided with or without the knowledge of the browser
behavior? Is there a record of which parts of the HTML 5 spec are
based on browser test results?

Thanks,

Erik

Received on Saturday, 17 April 2010 19:00:32 UTC