Explain that http-equiv has nothing to do with HTTP headers #11494
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annevk
approved these changes
Jul 28, 2025
| <div class="warning" id="warning-http-equiv-unrelated-to-http-headers"> | ||
| <p>Despite the name <code data-x="attr-meta-http-equiv">http-equiv</code>, pragma directives are | ||
| almost entirely unrelated to HTTP headers. Implementers and web developers are best off thinking | ||
| of them as entirely separate, and the name as being a historical accident.</p> |
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Thankfully we have "a hierarchy" as example in the style guide.
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I was still surprised that it was "an HTTP" instead of "a HTTP"...
| <code>meta</code> similar to the model used by the <code | ||
| data-x="attr-meta-charset">charset</code> attribute. (Note that avoiding in-document pragmas is | ||
| often the better choice, since the DOM is mutable, and it's rarely a good idea to let pragmas be | ||
| applied or un-applied dynamically.)</p> |
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The mere fact of putting it in the node tree makes a policy mutable as you at least go from 0 to 1 during the lifetime of the document. I think that's worth clarifying here as that's often overlooked.
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Let me know what you think of the new phrasing
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Closes #7435. See also #2335 which discusses name="" vs. http-equiv="".
/semantics.html ( diff )