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HTML Element: <meta>

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The HTML <meta> element indicates metadata about an HTML document. Metadata is not displayed on the page but is machine readable. The <meta> element always goes within the <head> element. Metadata within a <meta> element are always passed in pairs, one part describing what type of metadata is involved, the other indicating the value to ascribe to the metadata.

 

For example, the following are uses of the <meta> element:

 

Use to which a specific <meta> element can be put

Example

Page author

<meta name="author" content="Nematrian">

Page description

<meta name="description" content="HTML meta element">

Page keywords (used by search engines)

<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Reference, Metadata">

Page to refresh every say 60 seconds

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60">

Page viewport that aims to make webpage look good on all devices

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

 

In HTML 5 a viewport metadata component was introduced (see above), allowing webpage designers greater control over the user’s viewing experience, i.e. how the browser handles the browser window within which the page is viewed.

 

The attributes it can take (other than HTML global attributes and HTML event attributes) include:

 

Attribute

Description

More

charset

Specifies character encoding

Here

content

Value associated with the http-equiv or name attribute

Here

http-equiv

HTTP header for information/value of attribute

Here

name

Name of piece of metadata

Here

 

The element used to support the scheme attribute, but this is no longer supported in HTML 5.

 

To create or access such an element in JavaScript see here. The corresponding HTML DOM object supports standard DOM properties and methods, and additional properties with the same name and meaning as the attributes of the underlying HTML element referred to above (with the http-equiv property of the underlying element corresponding to the httpEquiv property of the DOM object). The default style applicable to this element is shown here.

 

EXAMPLE:


HTML USED IN THIS EXAMPLE:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html> <!-- Copyright (c) Nematrian Limited 2018 -->
<head>
<meta name="description" content="Nematrian meta element (JavaScript example)">
</head>
<body>
Created using HTML:<br>
<span>A meta element indicating document author is included in this document</em>

<br><br>Created using JavaScript:<br>
<em>with content: <span id="element"></span></em>

<script>
var x = document.getElementsByTagName("META")[0].content;
document.getElementById("element").innerHTML = x;
</script>

</body>
</html>


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