PUBLISHED ON: FEBRUARY 19, 2021
HTML Meta Tag
In HTML, the <meta> tag is used to represent metadata.
-
This meta-data represented by <meta> tag cannot be represented using other HTML tags like <base>,<link>,<script>,<style> and <title>
-
The <meta> tag comes under the category of Empty elements.
-
Metadata will not be displayed on the web page and metadata is used by browsers and search engines.
-
Metadata is simply data about data or it is information about the data.
-
The <meta> tag is always used inside <head> tag in an HTML Document.
HTML <meta> Tag Syntax and Usage
As <meta> is an empty tag, it does not require an end tag it only requires a start tag.
The basic syntax for the same is given below:
<meta charset=" ">
HTML <meta> Tag Attributes
The <meta> tag supports both global and event attributes and some of the common attributes are given below.
| Attributes |
Description |
| charset |
This attribute is used to declare the web page's character encoding.
Its value is character_set
|
| name |
-
application_name:- defines the name of application running the web page.
-
author:- which is used to define the name of the author.
-
keywords:- which contain words relevant to the content of the web page separated using commas
-
referrer:- controls the HTTP referrer header which is attached to the request that has been sent from the browser
-
generator:- it contains the identifier of the software that generated the page.
-
description:- contains a short and accurate summary of the content of the Web Page.
|
| content |
It contains the value of name or http-equiv attribute depending on which is used. |
| http-equiv |
This attribute is used to provide an http-header for the information of the content attribute.
This attribute's instructions are as given follows:-
-
content-security-policy:-allows page author to define a content-policy
-
refresh:- The number of seconds until the page should be reloaded only if the content attribute contains a positive integer.
-
set-cookie:- defines a cookie for the page
|
HTML <meta> Tag Basic Example
Below we have a basic example of the <meta> tag:
<meta charset="utf-8">
<!-- Redirect page after 3 seconds -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;url="https://www.studytonight.com/">
Syntax to define Keyword for Search Engine
<meta name="keywords" content="Java,python,jQuery">
Syntax to define the author of the Page
<meta name="author" content="Himani">
Syntax to refresh the document
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10">
// it will refresh document after every 10 seconds
Browser Support for HTML5 <meta> tag
Following browsers support this attribute:
-
Firefox 1+
-
Google Chrome 1+
-
Internet Explorer 2+
-
Safari 1+
-
Opera 4+
