http-equiv attribute | httpEquiv property

Gets or sets information used to bind the value of a content attribute of a meta element to an HTTP response header.

Syntax

Property values

Type: String

the information in the response header. See HTTP Response Headers for a list of possible values.

Standards information

• Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification, Section 2.5.5
• HTML 4.01 Specification, Section 7.4.4

Remarks

If the property is omitted, the name property should be used to identify the meta-information. The httpEquiv property is not case-sensitive.

Developers using the httpEquiv and content attributes to refresh documents from alternate URLs should treat the value of content as untrusted data. For more information, please see Security Considerations: Dynamic HTML.

As of Windows Internet Explorer 8, the httpEquiv attribute also supports a value of x-ua-compatible, which allows developers to specify a legacy document mode that Windows Internet Explorer should use to display a webpage. For full details, see Specifying legacy document modes. (As of Windows 8, legacy document modes are supported only for Internet Explorer for the desktop.)

As of Windows 8, you can specify the following values for use with Windows Runtime apps using JavaScript:

• ms-https-connections-only requires Windows Runtime apps using JavaScript to use secure (HTTPS) connections. For more info, see How to require an HTTPS connection.

Examples

This example causes the browser to reload the document every two seconds.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2">

This example sets the character set for the document.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
      content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

This example disables theme support for the document.

<meta http-equiv="msthemecompatible" content="no">

This example tells Internet Explorer to display a webpage in IE9 mode, if possible.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">

See also

Reference

content

meta

Conceptual

Defining Document Compatibility