This is one of those tags that has a myriad of uses, many of them undiscovered. If you are looking for information on Platform for Internet Content (PICS) see www.w3.org/PICS/.
There will always be information that should be included in a publication but are not necessarily part of it. Such elements include the author's name, the copyright information and publication dates. This is called "meta" information. This element is used to identify meta-information in the document. This element is not meant to take the place of elements which already have a purpose, for example, the TITLE element,
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This specifies the characterset to be used in the display of this page.
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the content always seems to serve as a qualifier for another attribute. see below.
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dir=
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| "rtl" |
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lang=
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list of language codes
list of country codes
Example:
<meta name="keywords" lang="en" content="vacation, Quebec">
<meta name="keywords" lang="fr" content="vacances, Québec">
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this is interesting: some members of ADV-HTML stipulate that http-equiv is the "correct" method of overriding the normal HTTP header. However, all of my sources list more arguments for the "name=" attribute than for http-equiv.
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| "expires"
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<meta http-equiv="expires" content="Fri, 12 May 1996 14:35:02 EST">
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| "keywords"
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<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="nor, synapse.net">
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| "refresh"
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<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; URL=noise.mid"> (reload the midi sound file "noise.mid" in 1 second). "Refresh" causes the reloading of the specified page. "Content" specifies the number of seconds before the next download. "URL=" specifies the page to be downloaded.
Example:
example page for refresh
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| "reply-to"
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<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="nor@synapse.net ">
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name=
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this is the vehicle that some search engines look for. However, this has been stated to be an 'incorrect' method - use 'http-equiv' instead. Anyone clarifying this, please let me know via the comment form at the top of this page. Search engines are supposed to look for "author, description, copyright and keywords".
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| "author"
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<meta name="author" content="Ron Woodall">
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| "copyright" |
<meta name="copyright" content="This document copyright 1996 by Ron Woodall">
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| "description" |
<meta name="description" content="a listing of HTML elements">
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| "distribution" |
<meta name="distribution" content="global, local, webcom">
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| "indextype" |
<meta name="indextype" content="service">
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| "keywords" |
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, listing, compendium, tags, elements">
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| "rating" |
this is a method of "restricting" access to a WWW page. It is supposed to rate a web page as to its suitability for children.
The "name=" attribute sets up the "rating" condition and "content=" sets the specific rating for that page.
There are four ratings: "general", "mature", "restricted" and "14 years" that are all arguments for the "content=" attribute.
<meta name="rating" content="general">
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| "resource-type" |
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
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scheme=
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"The scheme attribute is used to identify the expected format of the value of the content attribute, for cases when a property supports multiple formats. The values permitted for the scheme attribute depend on the property name and the profile."(W3C)
The HTML 4.0 specification gives several examples that may help to clarify "scheme=". The first is the cataloging system for most public libraries - called the "Dewey Decimal System". This is their (W3C) example.
<meta scheme="dds" name="description" content="04.251 Supercomputers systems design">
Other possible schemes are ISBN, Library of Congress and, in our case, the Library of Carleton University uses its own numbering scheme. It would appear as follows:
<meta scheme="Carleton University" name="description" content="a34.888 Henry VIII, history of">
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url=
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seems to work only inside the "content=" attribute. see above. If the url is specified, this new page is loaded as specified by "refresh" and "content" above. If no URL is specified, the current page will be reloaded. See 'http-equiv="refresh" content="1;URL=xxx.xxx"' above.
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