HTML Head
The Head Element
The head element contains general information, also called meta-information, about a document. Meta means "information about".
You can say that meta-data means information about data, or meta-information means information about information.
Information Inside the Head Element
The elements inside the head element should not be displayed by a browser.
According to the HTML standard, only a few tags are legal inside the head section. These are: <base>, <link>, <meta>, <title>, <style>, and <script>.
Look at the following illegal construct:
| <head> <p>This is some text</p> </head> |
In this case the browser has two options:
- Display the text because it is inside a paragraph element
- Hide the text because it is inside a head element
If you put an HTML element like <h1> or <p> inside a head element like this, most browsers will display it, even if it is illegal.
Should browsers forgive you for errors like this? We don't think so. Others do.
Head Tags
| Tag | Description |
|---|---|
| <head> | Defines information about the document |
| <title> | Defines the document title |
| <base> | Defines a base URL for all the links on a page |
| <link> | Defines a resource reference |
| <meta> | Defines meta information |
| Tag | Description |
|---|---|
| <!DOCTYPE> | Defines the document type. This tag goes before the <html> start tag. |