It is interesting to read the web developer perspective on this element. Perhaps it is of little use to them. As an end user who prefers using a non-graphical

It is interesting to read the web developer perspective on this element. Perhaps it is of little use to them. As an end user who prefers using a non-graphical http client to retrieve web content to a file (then view the file in another program -- often a browser), I use this element every day. When I know I will use a browser to view the file, I use a client that writes the base href according to the target domain to beginning of the file.