I'm using the following:

$("#placeholder").load("http://other.host/loaded/doc #source a"...)

When /loaded/doc contains <base href> it contaminates the document I'm doing this inclusion. This is observable when I do the following (after the load above)

$("#x").html( $("#y").html())

while #y looks as follows:

<div id="y">

<img src="/img/src" />

</div>

In such case firefox is not able to load the img in #x becouse it's baseURI is taken from the /loaded/doc.

The above construct works fine in IE, Opera, but when I examine the copied html, img has it's baseURI changed to the one loaded.