<HEAD>

NN all IE all HTML all

<HEAD>...</HEAD>

End Tag: Optional

The HEAD element contains document information that is generally not rendered as part of the document in the browser window. At most, the TITLE element affects what the user sees when a browser displays its content in the browser window's titlebar.

Content of the HEAD element consists entirely of other elements that are intended to assist the browser in working with document data. Another classification of data, handled in one or more META elements, can also assist search engines and document parsers to learn more about the document based on abstract information supplied by the author. The following table shows the elements that may be nested inside a HEAD element according to three different specifications.

Element	NN 4	IE 4	HTML 4.0
BASE	*	*	*
BASEFONT	*	*	-
BGSOUND	-	*	-
ISINDEX	*	-	*
LINK	*	*	*
META	*	*	*
NEXTID	-	*	-
SCRIPT	*	*	*
STYLE	*	*	*
TITLE	*	*	*

Example

<HEAD>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Danny Goodman">
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
    H1 {color:cornflowerblue}
</STYLE>
</HEAD>

Object Model Reference

IE	[window.]document.all.elementID

CLASS

NN n/a IE 4 HTML n/a

CLASS="className1[ ...classNameN]"

Optional

An identifier generally used to associate an element with a style sheet rule defined for a class selector. See . The CLASS attribute makes no sense for the HEAD element because the attribute can't be assigned to a class style selector that has not yet been defined. (It gets defined later within the HEAD element.) This attribute appears to be in Internet Explorer for the sake of consistency, rather than genuine functionality.

Value
Case-sensitive identifier. Multiple classes can be assigned by separating the class names with spaces within the quoted attribute value.

Default

None.

Object Model Reference

IE	[window.]document.all.elementID.className

ID

NN n/a IE 4 HTML n/a

ID="elementIdentifier"

Optional

A unique identifier that distinguishes this element from all the rest in the document. You can use this attribute value in Internet Explorer scripts as a way to reference the HEAD element by ID rather than by the longer document.all.tags("HEAD")[0] reference.

Example

<HEAD ID="docHead">...</HEAD>

Value
Case-sensitive identifier.

Default

None.

Object Model Reference

IE	[window.]document.all.tags("HEAD")[0].id [window.]document.all.elementID.id

PROFILE

NN n/a IE n/a HTML 4

PROFILE="URLList"

Optional

A meta data profile is a separate file (or browser built-in named definition) that defines one or more meta data property behaviors. In some ways, a profile is like a header for meta data whose properties are assigned in plain view within META elements inside a HEAD element. Future browsers and external systems (such as search engines) may use the profile information to extend the typical name/value assignments in META elements as implemented in Version 4 (and earlier) browsers.

Example

<HEAD PROFILE="http://www.giantco.com/profiles/common">
    <META NAME="Author" content="Jane Smith">
    <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="benefits,insurance,">
    ...
</HEAD>

Value
Any valid URL or browser profile constant.

Default

Browser default.

TITLE

NN n/a IE 4 HTML n/a

TITLE="advisoryText"

Optional

An advisory description of the element. Because the HEAD element does not display content in the browser window, there is no region of the screen to associate with the normal tooltip that displays TITLE attribute data.

Do not confuse the TITLE attribute of a HEAD element with the TITLE element that is nested inside the HEAD element. The latter represents the title of the document that appears in the browser window's titlebar and can be used by document parsers to extract the title for indexing purposes.

Example

<HEAD TITLE="Widget Price List">...</HEAD>

Value
Any string of characters. The string must be inside a matching pair of (single or double) quotation marks.

Default

None.

Object Model Reference

IE	[window.]document.all.elementID.title