Web Programming with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript

1.8 HTML Attributes

Before we formally introduce a few of the different types of meta elements, we first need to discuss attributes, which are used in all meta elements. Container elements provide information between their start and end tags. Void elements (including the meta element) have no end tags, so they can’t provide information that way. Instead, they provide information using attributes. In the following example, charset is an attribute for a meta element:

<meta charset="utf-8">

Most attributes have a value assigned to them. In this example, charset is assigned the value "utf-8". Although most attributes have a value assigned to them, some do not. Later on, we’ll see some attributes that appear by themselves, without a value. You ...