encyclo - 12:12 pm on Oct 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

the template is in www.example.com/design/templates/blue-template/ And inside template folder you have the stylesheet for the template which is very common, then without the base element, resources in the CSS will have to use a path based on the script where is loaded from, or a fully qualified path.

This is not the case - the path for the images referenced in the CSS file are relative to that file, not that of the parent document.

So the template can be in www.example.com/design/templates/blue-template/ and you can use background: url(images/arrow.gif) safely with NO base element as the image will be loaded from www.example.com/design/templates/blue-template/images/arrow.gif.

The base element does not help in this situation. As long as the CSS file uses relative URIs then the location of the template directory is irrelevant. Any CMS which depends on the base element is badly-designed. I don't know about Joomla specifically, but from the initial description it does sound like the base element is merely superfluous.