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Usage
The <meta charset> attribute sets the character encoding of an HTML document. It is extremely important that you explicitly declare the encoding of every HTML document; failing to do so will cause browsers to guess the encoding, which can lead to cross-site scripting attacks if they guess incorrectly.
Setting the character encoding should be done in the Content-Type http header, but can also be set with the <meta charset> attribute. The charset specified in the meta element and http header must match.
In order for all browsers to recognize a <meta charset> declaration, it must be
- Within the <head> element,
- Before any elements that contain text, such as the <title> element, AND
- Within the first 512 bytes of your document, including DOCTYPE and whitespace
Example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>My home page</title>
</head>
<body>
...
</body>
</html>
This is equivalent to the the http-equiv attribute with a value of "Content-Type", like this:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
You may use either; there is no need to use both. Both forms are supported by all major browsers.
Unfortunately, there is no cross-browser way to retrieve what character encoding the browser ended up choosing (i.e. whether the <meta charset> declaration worked). In non-IE browsers, you can use document.characterSet. In IE, you might think you could document.getElementsByTagName('meta')[0].charset, but this only returns the character encoding you specified, not the encoding that IE is actually using.
Values
In theory, any HTML document can specify any character encoding. In practice, browsers ship with a limited set of encodings that they support (see links below).
HTML 5 states: "Authors should not use JIS_X0212-1990, x-JIS0208, and encodings based on EBCDIC. Authors should not use UTF-32. Authors must not use the CESU-8, UTF-7, BOCU-1 and SCSU encodings. ... Authors are encouraged to use UTF-8."
Elements
You can use the charset attribute on the following elements:
- <a>
- <link>
- <meta>
- <script>
Browser compatibility
Compatibility table legend
| Test | IE8 | IE7 | IE6 | FF3 | FF2 | Saf3 | Op9 | Chrome | |:---------|:--------|:--------|:--------|:--------|:--------|:---------|:--------|:-----------| | meta.charset reflects <meta charset="utf-8"> | Y | Y | Y | N | N | N | Y | N | | document.characterSet reflects <meta charset="utf-8"> | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |