Document HEAD

The HEAD of an HTML document is an unordered collection of meta-information about the document. Browsers and other programs can use information in the HEAD to track and index the document.

URLs:

• HTML Archive
• HTML Specification 3.0

Print Resources:

• Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week, Laura Lemay, Sams Publishing, ISBN 0-672-30667-0.
• Teach Yourself More Web Publishing with HTML in a Week, Laura Lemay, Sams Publishing, ISBN 1-57521-005-3.

W3E References:

• HTML
• SGML

Detail:

These elements may appear in a document HEAD:

BASE (optional)

The BASE element allows the URL of the document itself to be recorded in situations in which the document may be read out of context. URLs within the document may be in a "partial" form relative to this base address.

ISINDEX (optional)

The ISINDEX element informs the browser that the document is an index document. In addition to reading it, the reader may use a keyword search.

LINK (optional)

The LINK element indicates a relationship between the document and some other object. Typical uses indicate authorship, related indices and glossaries. LINK can also be used to define a tool bar of navigation buttons, include a document banner, or reference a style sheet that controls the look of the document.

META (optional)

The META element embeds information about a document which is not defined by other HTML elements. Such information can be used by servers, clients or robots to identify index, and catalogue specialized document meta-information.

A recent use for the META element involves prompting servers to send additional information after a specified elapsed time. The "server push" and "client pull" dynamic is described in An Exploration Of Dynamic Documents.

NEXTID (optional)

The NEXTID is a parameter used by editors to generate unique identifiers. This tag takes a single attribute which is the number of the next document-wide numeric identifier to be allocated of the form z123. Browser software may ignore this tag.

RANGE (optional)

The RANGE element marks a range of the document for highlighting regions of the document matching some search criteria, or which are the subject of an annotation.

TITLE (required)

Every HTML document must contain a title element. The TITLE element should identify the contents of the document in a global context, and may be used in a history lists and as a label for the window displaying the document. In contrast with headings, titles are not normally displayed in the text of a document itself.
While there is no specific limit to the length of titles, long titles may be truncated in some applications. To minimize this possibility, keep titles to fewer than 64 characters. At the same time be aware that a very short title, such as Introduction, may be meaningless out of context.