Changes in HTML 5 - <base/> Tag

What's new in HTML 5

The target attribute has been added for consistency with the <a> tag.

Differences between HTML 5 and earlier versions of HTML

In previous versions of HTML, the value of the <base href> attribute was required to be an absolute URL. In HTML 5, it can be resolved relative to the address of the document.

In ployglot HTML documents the <base/> tag is coded as a self-closing tag the same as in the 2000-2010 Recommendations from the W3C HTML Working Group. Those specifications changed the ending delimiter to /> from > in older recommendations. They also defined the HTML namespace for the base element type name and the names of other HTML element types.