meta tag

Meta tag - <meta>

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Description
Provides information about the document, usually to be used by search engines in determining the document's content. When a search engine returns unusual results it indicates that the meta tag has not been used or has been used incorrectly. Other information specified in the meta element may be the expiry date for the page or details of its creator. Must include CONTENT attribute and either NAME or HTTP-EQUIV. If NAME, then the META is intended for use by the browser and if HTTP-EQUIV, by the server. For search engines, the META element is used to provide keywords. Setting NAME to "description" sends the text of the CONTENT attribute to the search engine, otherwise if NAME = "keywords" the content element should be used to list the keywords required. META can direct the page to automatically redirect to another page by using META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH". Set the CONTENT to a number of seconds delay followed by a semi-colon and URL=http://www.newurl.com<br> If META HTTP-EQUIV is set to "Expires" then the CONTENT can set a date after which the browser must reload the web page to ensure the latest version is being used. Finally, meta can be used to declare a rating for the web pages, which is rather more complex. Check http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS and http://www.rsac.org for more details.

Attributes

Name	Values	Description
charset	string	Specifies the character encoding, which will allow the browser to more fully understand the link.
content	metacontent
dir	ltr\|rtl	The direction in which text flows when surrounded by text which flows in different directions.
http-equiv	string	Maps the tags and their names into a HTTP format.
lang	language_type	The ISO description for the language of the element.
name	metaname	meta name
scheme	string	Specifies a scheme which interprets the value of a property. New for HTML 4.0, this is not accepted by either IE4 or Netscape4.
title	string	Title for element which is often displayed as a tool-tip when the cursor hovers over the element.
url	url

Example

<meta name="description" content="enhance produces it solutions for small businesses and private users">
<meta name="keywords" content="enhance, html editor, programming, vb6">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="120;url=http://www.ehtml.com/newpage.htm">
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="tue, 31 dec 2002 19:00:00 gmt">

This example can not be displayed.

Compatability

HTML	NETSCAPE				INTERNET EXPLORER
4.1	N2	N3	N4	N6	IE3	IE4	IE5	IE6
YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES

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