HTML's META-tag
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The META element is used within the
HEAD element to embed document
meta-information not defined by other HTML elements.
The META element can be used to identify properties of a document
(e.g., author, expiration date, a list of key words, etc.)
and assign values to those properties.
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HTML lets you specify metadata -- information about a
document rather than document content -- in a variety of ways.
The META element can be used to include name/value pairs
describing properties of the document, such as author, expiry
date, a list of key words etc.
The
META specification does not define a standard set of properties.
It is especially important when your index page has little or no
user-oriented text, e.g.
- when your site is frames-based and the index.html consists of little more than
the FRAME tags.
- when your page is entirely graphical and so there's no text for the
search engines to index (except that some may index the text inside
the ALT attributes in the IMG tag).
| name
| This attribute identifies a property name.
The specification does not list legal values for this attribute.
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| content
| This attribute specifies a property's value.
The specification does not list legal values for this attribute.
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| http-equiv
| This attribute may be used in place of the name
attribute. HTTP servers use this attribute to gather information
for HTTP response message headers.
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Each META element specifies a property/value pair.
The name attribute identifies the property and
the content attribute specifies the property's value.
For example, the following declaration sets a value for the Author property:
<META name = "Author"
content = "Alan Richmond">
<META name = "Author"
lang = "fr"
content = "Victor Hugo">
Note. When a property specified by a
META element takes a value that is a URL
some authors prefer to specify the meta data via the
Link element.
Thus, the following meta data declaration:
<META name = "DC.identifier"
content = "ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1866.txt">
might also be written:
<LINK rel = "DC.identifier"
type = "text/plain"
href = "ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1866.txt">
- The NAME attribute specifies the property name while
- the CONTENT attribute specifies the property value.
Some typical names are:-
Author, Classification, Copyright, Description,
Formatter, Generator, Keywords, Rating, Robots.
For example:-
<META NAME = generator
Content = "Mozilla 4.0">
is a tag that many
HTML editors
automatically insert into a user's HTML code.
It can be used to identify the software used to generate the page.
It is possible for you to control how your page is indexed by using
the META tag
to specify additional keywords to index, and a short abstract.
It will be very helpful to list the keywords in a META tag - for
example, your site might be reasonably specified by several dozens of
keywords - but you probably would not want them all on your home page.
Here is an example:-
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Web Developer's Virtual Library
</TITLE>
<META NAME = "Keywords" CONTENT = "
HTML, CGI, Java, VRML, browsers, plugins,
graphics, HTTP servers, JavaScript, Perl,
ActiveX, Shockwave">
<META NAME = "Description" CONTENT="
Locate web authoring & software Internet
resources at The WDVL, a well-organised
goldmine with over 500 pages and thousands
of links about HTML, CGI, Java, VRML,
browsers, plugins, graphics, HTTP servers,
JavaScript, Perl, ActiveX, Shockwave,..">
</HEAD>
There is also a Robots META
tag, to tell search engine robots if the present page may be
indexed, and if the links may be followed.
HTML's META-tag: HTTP-EQUIV
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