Syntax
<META>
Attribute Specifications
NAME=Name (property name)
HTTP-EQUIV=Name (HTTP response header name)
CONTENT=CDATA (associated data)
SCHEME=CDATA (form of data)
internationalization attributes (for the CONTENT)
Contents:
Empty
Contained in:
HEAD

<META NAME=author CONTENT="Simon Thomson">

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="A description of HTML 4.0's META element for metadata.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="META, meta element, metadata, metainformation, meta data, meta information, keywords, description, refresh, HyperText Markup Language, HTML, HTML4, HTML 4.0, eluk, eurolinkuk, css, Cascading Style Sheets, css2, css 2.0, <meta> tag, <META> tag>"

• index specifies that the page should be indexed while noindex specifies that it should not be indexed;
• follow specifies that the page's links should be followed while nofollow specifies that they should not be followed;
• all is equivalent to index,follow (the default value);
• none is equivalent to noindex,nofollow.

<META NAME=robots CONTENT="noindex,follow">

<META HTTP-EQUIV=Expires CONTENT="06 February 2002 10:10:35 GMT">
sets the expiry date of the document.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Script-Type" CONTENT="text/javascript">
sets the client-side scripting language for inline scripts to JavaScript.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css">
sets the style language for inline styles to CSS.HTTP header causes some browsers to redraw the page after initially displaying it.

<META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="10; URL=http://www.eluk.co.uk/">
tells the browser to load http://www.eluk.co.uk/ 10 seconds after the current document has finished loading. Not all browsers support this, so authors should provide an alternate means of moving to the new page where necessary. The Refresh header is sometimes used for "splash screens" or when a page has moved, but the technique is not very effective since users may not even be looking at the window that is to be refreshed and since it messes up the user's history on many browsers. Some search engines penalize pages that use a Refresh of a few seconds or less.

the following META element identifies windows-1251 as the character set for the document.
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=windows-1251">

or

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=SHIFT_JIS">
sets the character encoding for the document to SHIFT_JIS (a Japanese encoding). Note that using META for this purpose rather than a true HTTP header causes some browsers to redraw the page after initially displaying it.

The following table contains information concerning the character sets supported by Internet Explorer 5. The information provided is:

1. Display Name — the name used to refer to the character set.
2. Preferred Charset ID — the most common identifier used to set character sets in Internet Explorer. For example, in the previous code sample windows-1251 is the Charset ID.
3. Additional Aliases — other identifiers that may be used to set character sets.
4. MLang Code Pages — numeric value of the code pages used by the Internet Explorer MLang API.
5. Supported by Version — the versions of Internet Explorer that support the listed character sets.

   Note CS indicates that the version of Internet Explorer must support complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Thai.