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HTML 5 <meta> Tag

The HTML <meta> tag is used for declaring metadata for the HTML document.

Metadata can include document decription, keywords, author etc. It can also be used to refresh the page or set cookies.

The meta tag is placed between the opening/closing <head> </head> tags.

Example

The following example demonstrates how to use the <meta> tag to redirect to another web page. Note that in this example, the page is within an <iframe>, so only this part of the page will redirect.

Source Code	Result
<html> <head> <title>Meta Refresh Example</title> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=/html_5/tags/html_meta_tag_example.cfm" /> </head> <body style="background-color:#ff9900;"> <p>Watch me redirect to another page in 5 seconds...</p> </body> </html>

Attributes

HTML tags can contain one or more attributes. Attributes are added to a tag to provide the browser with more information about how the tag should appear or behave. Attributes consist of a name and a value separated by an equals (=) sign, with the value surrounded by double quotes. Here's an example, style="color:black;".

There are 3 kinds of attributes that you can add to your HTML tags: Element-specific, global, and event handler content attributes.

The attributes that you can add to this tag are listed below.

Element-Specific Attributes

The following table shows the attributes that are specific to this tag/element.

Attribute	Description
Name	Name for the property. Can be anything. Examples include, keywords, description, author, revised, generator etc.
content	Specifies the property's value.
charset	Specifies the character encoding used by the document. This is called a character encoding declaration.
http-equiv	Used for http response message headers. For example http-equiv can be used to periodically refresh the page, redirect to another page, etc. Possible values include: `content-language` `content-type` `default-style` `refresh`

Global Attributes

The following attributes are standard across all HTML 5 tags.

class	id	style
contenteditable	irrelevant	tabindex
contextmenu	lang	template
dir	ref	title
draggable	registrationmark

For a full explanation of these attributes, see HTML 5 global attributes.

Event Handler Content Attributes

Event handler content attributes enable you to invoke a script from within your HTML. The script is invoked when a certain "event" occurs. Each event handler content attribute deals with a different event.

Here are the standard HTML 5 event handler content attributes.

onabort	ondragover	onmousemove
onbeforeunload	ondragstart	onmouseout
onblur	ondrop	onmouseover
onchange	onerror	onmouseup
onclick	onfocus	onmousewheel
oncontextmenu	onkeydown	onresize
ondblclick	onkeypress	onscroll
ondrag	onkeyup	onselect
ondragend	onload	onstorage
ondragenter	onmessage	onsubmit
ondragleave	onmousedown	onunload

For a full explanation of these attributes, see HTML 5 event handler content attributes.

Also see the HTML 4.01 tags

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