following up on threads like this one and this one, working relative URLs that use fragments, e.g. index.php?main_page=page&id=32&chapter=1#anamedanchor, are difficult to create in defined pages and impossible in ez-pages because of zen-cart's use of the <base> tag.

i get that it makes some URLs leaner but nearly every URL in zen cart is a full URI complete with protocol and domain. so for the benefit of a few stylesheet and javascript links that actually use the <base>'s href (that's all as far as could tell) it does a lot of damage. e.g. on an easy page simple link pairs like
HTML Code:
<a href="#there">a link to there</a><a name="there">you are here</a>
end up having the link being resolved as www.your-site.com/#there instead of www.your-site.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=1&chapter=1#there as expected, thus it dumps you on the home page instead of scrolling to the desired part of the current page.
the fix for this behaviour (only works on non-ez-pages) is a cumbersome call to zen_href_link(), which of course has to be rewritten if you rename the page or move its content to another page.

solution
this could be fixed by changing includes/template/template_default/common/html_header.php.
omitting the <base> tag and making sure every stylesheet's href attribute and script's src attribute begins with DIR_WS_CATALOG (or DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG as required)