Meta Element

Meta elements are the HTML or XHTML <meta … > element used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Multiple elements are often used on the same page: the element is the same, but its attributes are different. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes.

The meta element has two uses: either to emulate the use of the HTTP response header, or to embed additional metadata within the HTML document.

With HTML up to and including HTML 4.01 and XHTML, there were four valid attributes: content, http-equiv, name and scheme. Under HTML 5 there are now five valid attributes: charset having been added. http-equiv is used to emulate the HTTP header. name to embed metadata. The value of the statement, in either case, is contained in the content attribute, which is the only required attribute unless charset is given. charset is used to indicate the character set of the document, and is available in HTML5.

Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document.

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sumber : http://en.wikipedia.org