META

Description

The META element is used within the HEAD element

to embed document meta-information not defined

by other HTML elements.

Such information may be extracted by servers/browsers.

The HTTP-EQUIV attribute binds the element to an HTTP response header.

If not present, the NAME attribute should be used to identify this

meta-information and it should not be used within an HTTP response header.

If the NAME attribute is not present, the name can be assumed equal to

the value of HTTP-EQUIV.

The CONTENT attribute defines

the meta-information content to be associated with the given name

and/or HTTP response header.

Minimum Attributes

<META CONTENT="..."

All Possible Attributes

<META HTTP-EQUIV="..."

NAME="..."

CONTENT="..."

URL="..."

Elements Allowed Within...

The META element is defined as having no content.

Allowed In Content Of...

Variations

The META element was introduced in RFC 1866 and is a

Level 1 element.

RFC 1866 specifies that a series of META elements with the same name

is equivalent to a single element with the combined contents concatenated

as a comma-separated list.

One proposal for specific information in the META element involves

including a

The URL attribute is a Netscape extension.

Netscape 1.1 has added a automatic refresh capability using the META element

by setting the HTTP-EQUIV attribute to "REFRESH",

the CONTENT attribute to a number of seconds, and the URL attribute

to the file to load which defaults to reloading the same file.

Netscape 1.1 also recognizes placing the URL inside the quotes

which define the CONTENT value

by using a semicolon following the number of seconds, then the

URL=http://... text.

Sandia Requirements

Two META elements are required to identify specific

information for Sandia's automated Web tools.

For large documents split into multiple HTML subdocuments, these META

elements should only be included in the HTML document that is the parent

of all the subdocuments, usually the Introduction or Table of Contents document.