Mixed in with all this is talk about Netscape and Microsoft either fighting with each other or shaking hands in agreement. I wanted to provide some guidance as to what's happening, though this is an issue that will be revisited as standards develop. Before stepping forward, it's important to understand where we are now. For example, a meta tag may describe the content of web page. That description is data about other data, the web page.
Any web page can have a variety of metadata associated with it.
There is a framework for meta tags, but the HTML specs do not definite exactly what meta tags exist and how they should be used. That framework has been used by various groups to create meta tags that are used in different ways. For example, browser manufacturers have provided support for the meta refresh tag, which causes a browser to reload a new page or the same page after a few seconds. Readers of this newsletter are most familiar with the two meta tags that enjoy widespread support by the search engines, the meta keywords and meta descriptions tag. That sounds low, but those were actually the highest counts of any tags.