Creating META tags
How can I put <meta> tags into my Frontier web pages?
When Frontier builds a web page (everything between the opening <html> tags through to the opening <body> tag), it calls a special script that handles <meta> tags.The script is called metaTags, and is located at html.data.standardMacros.metaTags.
How the metaTags script works
You almost never call the metaTags directly--it gets called by scripts that build the top part of the page. So to get it to do your bidding, you send it messages--via directives.
A directive, as you recall, is a line in a website object, that begins with a pound sign (#). To control the metaTags script, you need to use directives that begin with #meta.
The name's the thing
Frontier processes your #meta directives based on their name. There are three kinds of names:
- The plain #meta directive
- The #metaSomething directive
- The #metaEquivSomething directive
The plain #meta directive
The simplest way to add something to inside the <HEAD> tags of your page is to define a #meta directive. This can be a string or wp text object, or outline--doesn't matter. Whatever is in that object goes into the <HEAD> of the page, exactly as you typed it.
The image above shows a plain #meta directive, which is in a wptext object. Remember, this can be a string or outline in your website table, or just a #directive at the top of a page, as shown below...
Whoops. I'm getting ahead of myself. Notice that the example above shows the directive #metaTopic! What is that? Well, it's the #metaSomething format. Before we go further, check out the source for this page to see it in action, and see if you can guess how it works.
#metaSomething
When Frontier sees a directive that begins with 'meta' and is followed by something in the name, it builds a meta tag that looks like this:
<meta name="something" content="the value of metaSomething">
#metaEquivSomething
There's another kind of meta tag: Instead of a name/content attribute pair, it has a http-equiv/content attribute pair.
Using the http-equiv/content attribute pair is really powerful. It allows us to mimic real HTTP commands from a server--and force the browser to do some interesting things.
Probably the most common use of http-equiv is to force a page to refresh--or load another page after a short period of time.
Consider this example:
#metaEquivRefresh "n;URL=the URL"
results in:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="n;URL=the URL">
where n is the number of seconds before the URL loads into the browser.
Another common use of http-Equiv is Pragma. It prevents a page from being cached. The value of a meta pragma tag is always, "no-cache".
In Frontier, it would look like this:
#metaEquivPragma "no-cache"
Examples
#metaLocation "Chicago"
results in
<meta name="Location" content="Chicago">
The image below shows how this website's #metaSomething directives are set up. See the source to see how it turned out.
Two more meta-related directives
There are two more meta-related directives:
- #includeMetaGenerator
This creates a meta tag that shows Frontier as the generator of the page.
- #includeMetaCharset
This creates a meta tag that shows the proper character set for the page. This is useful when doing pages in foreign languages. This works with the #charset directive.
These directives can also be set in user.html.prefs. (I set both of these to false.)
Other Links
- Scripting.com Web tutorial: Defines and Custom Directives
- Matt Neuburg's Web Tutorial: Frontier HTML Basics
-
General META Information: An excellent rundown of all the different types of META tags. Good HTML background, also has links to other META info.
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This is Phil's Frontier Scripting Site. San Francisco, CA
Copyright © 1996-98, Phil Suh. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.filsa.net/frontier/ii/1998/07/metaDirectives.html
This page last built on 6/28/99; 11:07:53 PM