Why does the base tag seem to be working in Opera and Chrome, but not in Firefox and IE?

Question

I have a site where I use the base tag. All the links in the site are relative, and I set an absolute href so that all the links should be aimed at the right target. And it works in Opera and Chrome. All links in the menu works, all images and style-sheets are found. But in Firefox and IE they are not. And I don't get it!

I can browse it without problems in Opera and Chrome. While in FireFox and IE, it is all messed up when I get to one of the pages that are in a sub-directory. Have I misunderstood something about how that tag is supposed to be used? Or?

This is the site: http://sites.geekality.net/vipersystem/

Answer 1

The base tag only supports absolute paths in Firefox, it seems.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=366823&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#edef-BASE

Ergo,

<base href = "http://sites.geekjuggler.net/vipersystem/" />

should work.

Answer 2

From the HTML 4.01 specification: Base Element

href = uri [CT] This attribute specifies an absolute URI that acts as the base URI for resolving relative URIs.

However the HTML 5 draft drops the requirement that the Base element be an absolute URI, so I guess Opera and Chrome have already implemented that relaxation.