What are the recommendations for html <base> tag?

Question

I\'ve never seen HTML tag actually used anywhere before. Are there pitfalls to its use that means I should avoid it?

The fact that I have never noticed

Answer 1

My recommendation is NOT to use the element in managing url paths. Why?

It just trades one problem for another. Without the base element you can use any path system you like for your relative paths and links without fear they will break. The minute you set the base element to a path you are "locked in" to designing all your url's to work off that path and will now have to change ALL paths to work from the base path. Bad idea!

That means you have to now write LONGER paths AND keep track of where each path is relative to this base. Worse.....when using the element they recommend you use a fully qualified base path to support older browsers ("https://www.example.com/"), so now you've hard-coded your domain into your page or made all your links dependent on a valid domain path.

On the other hand, the minute you remove the base path again from your website, you are now free again to use shorter relative paths, which can be fully qualified, use absolute paths from the root, or use paths that are truly relative to the file and folder you are in. Its much more flexible. And best of all fragments like "#hello" work correctly without any additional fixes. Again, people are creating problems that don't exist.

Also, the argument above that your use base url's to help you migrate folders of web pages to new subfolder locations doesn't really matter today since most modern servers allow you to quickly set up any subfolder as a new application root folder under any domain. The definition or the "root" of a web application is not constrained by either folders or domains now.

It seems kind of silly this whole debate. So I say leave out base url and support the older native server-client default path system that does not use it.

Note: If the problem you have is controlling paths due to some new API system, the solution is simple...be consistent in how you path all your url's and links in your API. Don't rely on browser support of base or HTML5 or newer circus tricks like the javascript API kiddies do. Simply path all your anchor tags consistently and you will never have issues. Whats more, your web application is instantly portable to new servers regardless of path systems used.

Whats old is new again! The base element is clearly about trying to create a solution to a problem that never existed in the Web World 20 years ago, much less today.