What does http-equiv stands for?

Many web developers uses meta http-equiv tag, without solid understanding what does it means.
http-equiv stands for: hypertext transfer protocol equivalent and is equivalent to HTTP response header.
So putting:


<http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<META http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">


in HTML as meta TAG has the same effect as declaring HTTP response header


Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

That is why they are called ‘equivalent’. It is recommended to use HTTP header over HTML http-equiv meta tags. Multiple headers with the same name may be present only if the values may be concatenated.

Comments

binary said…
afaik, it's actually 'meta' tag with 'http-equiv' attribute rather than 'http-equiv' tag...
14 Sept 2009, 13:46:00
Jēkabs Kārkliņš said…
Silly me, of course it's META tag with http-equiv attribute. Thank you.
17 Sept 2009, 19:55:00
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