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The document head

The head contains meta-information (information of a higher order) about the document, such as the title. The head is identified by the HEAD element. This can be omitted, but it is better to include it as it allows server software to find out information about the document without having to search through the whole document.

The following elements can occur in the head:

TITLE

The title of the document.

ISINDEX

Indicates that the document is searchable.

BASE

Specifies the URL of the document.

LINK

Specifies relationships to other documents.

NEXTID

Indicates the next identifier to be generated (for use by authoring tools).

META

Specifies meta-information about the document.

None of the head elements are compulsory, although a TITLE element is recommended.

The TITLE element probably needs no further explanation, but note that only ASCII characters may be included and that the length should not exceed 64 characters including spaces.

The ISINDEX element tells the browser that the document can have a query string appended to its URL and the server will then invoke a script to perform a search accordingly. This is described in more detail in Chapter .

The BASE element takes a single attribute, HREF, which gives the URL of the document.

The LINK element describes the relationship of the document to other documents.

The NEXTID element specifies the next anchor label to be automatically generated within the document. This is used by HTML editing tools, to keep track of hypertext link labels (see Section ). It has no meaning to a browser and you don't need to use it if you are writing a document by hand.

The META element was introduced in HTML version 2.0 as a `catch-all' to allow meta-information that isn't covered by any of the other head elements to be included. It takes three attributes: NAME, HTTP_EQUIV and CONTENT. The information is named either by the NAME or HTTP_EQUIV element. For example:

  <META HTTP_EQUIV="Expires" 
        CONTENT="Tuesday, 19-Apr-94 18:47:05 GMT">

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.