Absolute vs Relative Reference

[doubledee]

When I have HTML like this...

 

<!-- Page Stylesheets -->
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="/css/_main.css" />

 

...should I use an Absolute Reference to the WebRoot (/css) or a Relative Reference (../css) ??

 

Debbie

 

[sunfighter]

Using a relative reference has always been the recommended way to go.

 

The reason being that the site could be picked up and moved without having things break.

 

Now HTML has a tag called BASE, this sets the first part of a call that, for one reason or another, needed to be absolutely referenced.

 

I set <base> when I grab a site's programming so I can view the images that are relative referenced in WAMP.

[Gighalen]

relative ;-)

[floridaflatlander]

I always thought absolute was something like http://www.mywebsite.com/folder/xxx.css and relative was ../xxx.css. If you can get away with relative thats the way to go.

 

 

[requinix]

I always thought absolute was something like http://www.mywebsite.com/folder/xxx.css and relative was ../xxx.css.

There are a few forms of absolute:

• http://www.example.com/folder/foo.bar (fully qualified)
  
• //www.example.com/folder/foo.bar (authority, no scheme*)
  
• /folder/foo.bar (path, no authority)

 

* For some reason I'm not sure if this one is supported by the standards. Read otherwise somewhere? Regardless, it works.