[whatwg] Issues concerning the <base> element and xml:base

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Mar 1, 2008, at 6:18 PM, L. David Baron wrote:

> On Saturday 2008-03-01 17:08 -0800, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> How about requiring that the base used is the one in effect when a  
>> given
>> relative URI is resolved, and define that URIs for resource-loading
>> elements are resolved at the time the relevant attribute is set or  
>> parsed
>> (but for hyperlinks, at the time it is dereferenced). That is easy to
>
> That would make whether :link or :visited matches not correspond to
> what you get when you click on the link, which seems pretty bad.
> Hyperlinks already need to be resolved eagerly to style links
> properly.

Dynamically changing <base> is a highly unlikely edge case anyway. If  
behavior for this case really needs to be specified in detail, then I  
think efficient and readily implementable behavior in the common case  
is more important than getting this relatively small detail right for  
the hypothetical page that changes <base>. Note that there are already  
ways to make :link or :visited not match what the link actually does,  
via event handlers.

Regards,
Maciej