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HTML5 <meta> Tag

Example

Describe metadata:

<head>
<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials" />
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML,CSS,XML,JavaScript" />
<meta name="author" content="Ståle Refsnes" />
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
</head>

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Browser Support

Internet Explorer Firefox Opera Google Chrome Safari

The <meta> tag is supported in all major browsers.

Definition and Usage

Metadata is data (information) about data.

The <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document. Metadata will not be displayed on the page, but will be machine parsable.

Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata.

The <meta> tag always goes inside the head element.

The metadata can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services.

Differences Between HTML 4.01 and HTML5

The scheme attribute is not supported in HTML5.

HTML5 has a new attribute, charset, which makes it easier to define charset:

  • HTML 4.01: <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
  • HTML5: <meta charset="UTF-8">

Tips and Notes

Note: The <meta> tag always goes inside the head element.

Note: Metadata is always passed as name/value pairs.

Note: The content attribute MUST be defined if the name or the http-equiv attribute is defined. if none of these are defined, the content attribute CANNOT be defined.

Examples

Example 1 - Define keywords for search engines:

<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, CSS, XML, XHTML, JavaScript" />

Example 2 - Define a description of your web page:

<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials on HTML and CSS" />

Example 3 - Define the last revision of your page:

<meta name="revised" content="Hege Refsnes, 23/10/2011" />

Example 4 - Refresh document every 30 seconds:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30" />

Attributes

New : New in HTML5.

Attribute Value Description
charsetNew character_set Specifies the character encoding for the HTML document
content text Gives the value associated with the http-equiv or name attribute
http-equiv content-type
default-style
refresh		 Provides an HTTP header for the information/value of the content attribute
name application-name
author
description
generator
keywords		 Specifies a name for the metadata
scheme format/URI Not supported in HTML5

Global Attributes

The <meta> tag also supports the Global Attributes in HTML5.

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