Meta refresh is a legacy method of instructing a web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
to automatically refresh the current web page or frame after a given time interval, using an HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
Meta elements are the HTML or XHTML <meta … > element used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Multiple elements are often used on the same page: the element is the same, but its attributes are different...
with the http-equiv parameter set to "refresh" and a content parameter giving the time interval in seconds. It is also possible to instruct the browser to fetch a different URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
when the page is refreshed, by including the alternative URL in the content parameter. By setting the refresh time interval to zero (or a very low value), this allows meta refresh to be used as a method of URL redirection
URL redirection
URL redirection, also called URL forwarding and the very similar technique domain redirection also called domain forwarding, are techniques on the World Wide Web for making a web page available under many URLs.- Similar domain names :...
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
(W3C), since unexpected refresh can disorient users. Meta refresh also impairs the web browser's "back" button in some browsers (including Internet Explorer 6
Internet Explorer 6
Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, a web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems...
and before), although most modern browsers compensate for this (Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...
, Chrome).
There are legitimate uses of meta-refresh, such as providing updates to dynamic web pages or implementing site controlled navigation of a website without JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
. Many large websites use it to refresh news or status updates, especially when dependencies on JavaScript and redirect headers are unwanted.
Examples
Place inside <head> to refresh page after 5 seconds:
Redirect to http://example.com/ after 5 seconds:
Redirect to http://example.com/ immediately:
Drawbacks
Meta refresh tags have some drawbacks:
If a page redirects too quickly (less than 2-3 seconds), using the "Back" button on the next page may cause some browsers to move back to the redirecting page, whereupon the redirect will occur again. This is bad for usability, as this may cause a reader to be "stuck" on the last website.
A reader may or may not want to be redirected to a different page, which can lead to user dissatisfaction or raise concerns about security.
For redirection
An alternative is by sending an HTTP redirection header, such as HTTP 301
HTTP 301
The HTTP response status code 301 Moved Permanently is used for permanent redirection. This status code should be used with the location header...
The HTTP response status code 302 Found is the most common way of performing a redirection.It is an example of industry practice contradicting the standard HTTP/1.0 specification , which required the client to perform a temporary redirect , but popular browsers implemented it as a 303 See Other , i.e...
. It is the preferred way to redirect a user agent
User agent
In computing, a user agent is a client application implementing a network protocol used in communications within a client–server distributed computing system...
to a different page. This can be achieved by a special rule in the Web server
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
is another alternative, but not recommended, because users might have disabled JavaScript in their browsers.
For refresh
An alternative method is to provide an interaction device, such as a button, to let the user choose when to refresh the content. Another option is using a technique such as Ajax
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
to update (parts of) the Web site without the need for a complete page refresh, but this would also require that the user enable JavaScript in their browser.
