http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ is a pretty big domain management company and they still use basic auth. I actually don't think users care. It looks a bit shoddy, but it works fine. Most people care more about the price of the product than how the site manages authentication.

I think that's a bad example to hold up, there's a repeatable issue with 123-reg's basic auth system that stops you from being able to fully log out on certain platforms.

Basic auth has no logout feature as far as I understand it. 123-reg tries to hack on something which looks like a logout feature but isn't.

For the point I was trying to make, it was the perfect example. It demonstrates that you can use basic auth, have "working" authentication, and be a successful website.

Note, the comment I was replying to was that basic auth is "unusable". 123-reg clearly disproves this.

And I cannot dispute any of your points, but the inability of basic auth to provide logout is certainly a concern that must be factored in to any decision making process. I personally love using basic auth in projects when I can as it just works for the majority of single user requirements.

Why can't basic auth logout be handled by the browser? e.g. display a "logout" button on the navigation bar when you're logged in with basic auth?

I guess it could be. If the browser vendors implemented such a feature.