[SOLVED] Meta tag

[mcdanielnc89]

in html 4.01 i get this ewrror wqen validating...

Code: Select all

 
end tag for element "META" which is not open 
…text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></meta>

And it is open, lol..

[Daniel]

you sure its opne?

[mcdanielnc89]

Yes here is the full thing.

HTML: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></meta>

[MikeHopley]

Originally Posted by mcdanielnc89

Yes here is the full thing.

HTML: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"></meta>

<meta> should never use a closing tag (just like <img>).

Remove your </meta>.

[Marc]

If you are using (x)HTML, should you not use this:

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

Ignore me if i am wrong

[MikeHopley]

Yes Marc, that's right. But it's not a closing tag -- it's a "self-closing" tag.

Whether in HTML or XHTML, you should never see the syntax </meta> or </img>.

[Marc]

Yep Mike... Just clarifying just incase someone using xHTML comes accross this thread one day

[AdRock]

I have used </meta> at the end of my meta tags and my code validates fine

Oh!!....and i don't know if it makes any difference but i'm using XHTML strict

[alexgeek]

Really Adam? That shouldn't happen, especially in xhtml strict.

[AdRock]

Yes....i just revalidated just to make sure and there were no errors at all

Edit: just updated the index page without hte closing </meta> tags

[MikeHopley]

Ack, I'm being a complete idiot.

</meta> is perfectly valid in XHTML. The reason you never see it is that it is that, with everyone serving XHTML with an HTML MIME type, it could cause nastier mangling than the supposedly "HTML compatible" <meta />.

There are actually three valid ways to close empty elements in XHTML:

• <tag></tag>
• <tag/>
• <tag />

Sorry for the confusion.

[alexgeek]

I don't think <tag/> is, as some netscape (i think it was netscape) browsers can't handle it.
Says on w3schools somewhere.

[MikeHopley]

Originally Posted by alexgeek

I don't think <tag/> is, as some netscape (i think it was netscape) browsers can't handle it.
Says on w3schools somewhere.

They are all valid. Browser compatibility is irrelevant to validity.

Of those three, only <tag /> should currently be used, because the other two have dodgy browser support.

[alexgeek]

I thought the whole point of validity was for browser support. Am I wrong?

[mcdanielnc89]

lol, wow... didn't think this would be much a big thing, lol...

[alexgeek]

Personally I think it's a good thing.
You learn a lot from threads like these.

[MikeHopley]

Originally Posted by alexgeek

I thought the whole point of validity was for browser support. Am I wrong?

The main motivation for writing valid code is to enjoy consistent results across browsers. But you must understand that "what is valid" and "what browsers actually understand" are two different things.