Document Head Elements
- Specifies a base URL for all relative
hrefand other links in the document. Must appear before any element that refers to an external resource. HTML permits only onebaseelement for each document. Thebaseelement has attributes, but no contents. - A development version of BASE is mentioned in HTML Tags; standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.
- Specifies a base font size, typeface, and color for the document. Used together with
fontelements. Deprecated in favor of stylesheets. - Standardized in HTML 3.2; deprecated in HTML 4.0 Transitional; invalid in HTML 4.0 Strict.
isindexcould either appear in the document head or in the body, but only once in a document. See Forms.
- Specifies links to other documents, such as previous and next links, or alternate versions. A common use is to link to external stylesheets, using the form:
- A less-common, but important, usage is to supply navigation hints consistently through use of microformats. Several common relationships are defined, that may be exposed to users through the browser interface rather than directly in the web page.
- A document's
headelement may contain any number oflinkelements. Thelinkelement has attributes, but no contents. - LINK existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.
- Can be used to specify additional metadata about a document, such as its author, publication date, expiration date, page description, keywords, or other information not provided through the other header elements and attributes. Because of their generic nature,
metaelements specify associative key-value pairs. In general, a meta element conveys hidden information about the document. Several meta tags can be used, all of which should be nested in the head element. The specific purpose of each meta element is defined by its attributes. - In one form,
metaelements can specify HTTP headers which should be sent by a web server before the actual content, for example: - — this specifies that the page should be served with an HTTP header called
foothat has a valuebar. - In the general form, a
metaelement specifiesnameand associatedcontentattributes describing aspects of the HTML page. To prevent possible ambiguity, an optional third attribute,scheme, may be supplied to specify a semantic framework that defines the meaning of the key and its value: for example: - In this example, the
metaelement identifies itself as containing thefooelement, with a value ofbar, from the DC or Dublin Core resource description framework. - Standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.
- Used for including generic objects within the document header. Though rarely used within a
headelement, it could potentially be used to extract foreign data and associate it with the current document. - Standardized in HTML 4.0; still current.
- Can act as a container for script instructions or link to an external script with the optional
srcattribute. Also usable in the document body to dynamically generate either both block or inline content. - Standardized in HTML 3.2; still current.
- Specifies a style for the document, usually in the form:
- Can either act as a container for style instructions or link to external stylesheets – for example, in CSS, with
@importdirectives of the form: - Standardized in HTML 3.2; still current.
- Define a document title. Required in every HTML and XHTML document. User agents may use the title in different ways. For example:
- Web browsers usually display it in a window's title bar when the window is open, and (where applicable) in the task bar when the window is minimized.
- It may become the default filename when saving the page.
- Search engines’ web crawlers may pay particular attention to the words used in the title.
- The
titleelement must not contain other elements, only text. Only onetitleelement is permitted in a document. - TITLE existed in HTML Tags, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.
Read more about this topic: HTML Element
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