249881 - Relative base URIs are ignored

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 553074

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect)

Description

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1

If a document is given a base URI which is itself relative (see the testcase at
http://purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/misc/relativebaseuritestcase/subfolder/testcase.html
), relative URIs within the document do not resolve correctly.

The HTML 4 spec (at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.4 )
does not say relative base URIs are illegal. DevGuru concurs (first paragraph of
http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/xhtml/quickref/xhtml_base.html ).

Opera resolves the link's URI as expected. IE tries to resolve http://../target.txt

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit
http://purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/misc/relativebaseuritestcase/subfolder/testcase.html
2. Click the link
Actual Results:  
The URI is resolved relative to the current directory

Expected Results:  
The URI should be resolved relative to the base URI, one folder up.

Comment 1

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> The HTML 4 spec (at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.4 )
> does not say relative base URIs are illegal.

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

that seems pretty clear. INVALID.

Comment 2

[Josh Birnbaum]

*** Bug 308498 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry]

Yes, it's not up to spec. Still, the other top-tier browsers (IE, Opera, Chrome, even Lynx) try to do what the author of the document intended, at least for HTML that doesn't advise itself as standards-compliant.

If the page author specifies a base of "//a/" and you've used http: to get the page, translating that base to "http://a/" is not a bad idea, especially when the alternative is likely to be every link on the page not working.

Comment 8

[petr.pisar]

(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > The HTML 4 spec (at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.4 )
> > does not say relative base URIs are illegal.
> 
> href = uri [CT]
>     This attribute specifies an absolute URI that acts as the base URI for 
>                                 ^^^^^^^^
> resolving relative URIs. 
> 
> that seems pretty clear. INVALID.

What about XHTML? Is this same bug tracked for XML under other bug number, or should I cry here?

Comment 9

[Daniel Hahler]

(In reply to comment #8)
> > > The HTML 4 spec (at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.4 )
> > > does not say relative base URIs are illegal.
> > 
> > href = uri [CT]
> >     This attribute specifies an absolute URI that acts as the base URI for 
> >                                 ^^^^^^^^
> > resolving relative URIs. 
> > 
> > that seems pretty clear. INVALID.
> 
> What about XHTML? Is this same bug tracked for XML under other bug number, or
> should I cry here?

Can you provide some documentation about BASE@href in XHTML?

For what it's worth, I completely agree with comment 7: other browsers get it right, it is useful, and there is no benefit from following the spec strictly, but it breaks all links.

Comment 10

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> there is no benefit from following the spec strictly

Apart from predictable behavior?  I mean... that's why we have specs instead of just making stuff up.

In any case, I'm not sure what we're discussing here.  The spec has been changed; we now follow the new spec.  That will ship in Firefox 4.

Comment 11

[:Ms2ger (he/him; ⌚ UTC+1/+2)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> > there is no benefit from following the spec strictly
> 
> Apart from predictable behavior?  I mean... that's why we have specs instead of
> just making stuff up.
> 
> In any case, I'm not sure what we're discussing here.  The spec has been
> changed; we now follow the new spec.  That will ship in Firefox 4.

So this bug is actually fixed, right?

Comment 12

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Sort of.  A different bug that was filed is fixed.  This one was marked invalid at the time.  Depends on how much history you want to rewrite, I guess.