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On Wednesday 06 November 2002 15:19, Eric L. Brine wrote:
> HTML 4.01 also has a section on META and http-requiv. However, the
> only reference to "refresh" is: "Note. Some user agents support the
> use of META to refresh the current page after a specified number of
> seconds, with the option of replacing it by a different URI. Authors
> should __not__ use this technique to forward users to different
> pages, as this makes the page inaccessible to some users. Instead,
> automatic page forwarding should be done using server-side
> redirects."
All the HTTP-EQUIV meta tags are relics from static HTML pages. The HTTP
server (eg. Apache) reads meta tags from HTML pages and appends all
meta tags with HTTP-EQUIV to outgoing HTTP headers. This feature is not
available for dynamic content; dynamic pages must set their own
headers.
> I'm guessing this is because http-equiv is designed to hold an HTTP
> header, but there is no such thing as an "Refresh" header in HTTP.
There is a Refresh header in HTTP. It's syntax is the same as for the
HTTP-EQUIV meta tag.
> So http-equiv="refresh" is no longer standard. Of course, this is all
> theoretical. In practice, too many people are not easily swayed by a
> measily thing such as a standard.
UAs are not required to deal with meta tags which contain HTTP-EQUIV
content. Both Internet Explorer (at least <6, v6+ may also support them
in quirk mode) and Netscape/Mozilla should interpret them if the server
does not include them in the real HTTP headers. Some UAs don't do this,
eg. Konqueror, and support for them might go away any time without
notice, so it should not be used.
The CGI module enables the programmer to add arbitrary HTTP headers with
the syntax
header(
-type => 'text/html',
-refresh => '0; url=http://www.address.com/'
);
See 'perldoc CGI' for more information.
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