Error in HTML 4.0 META "refresh" documentation

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#edef-META

	Some user agents support the use of META to refresh
	the current page after a specified number of seconds,
	with the option of replacing it by a different URI.

	<META http-equiv="refresh" content="3,http://www.acme.com/intro.html">

	The content is a number specifying the delay in seconds,
	followed by the URI to load when the time is up.

The syntax in this example is wrong. User agents which support
the refresh mechanism will correctly parse the number of
seconds, but the URL will be considered garbage, resulting in
the current document being reloaded, rather than the URI listed.
I verified this with Lynx 2.7.1, MSIE 4.01 (Win95), and Netscape
Navigator 4.03 (Mac).

An example of the correct syntax is:

<META http-equiv="refresh" content="3;
URL=http://www.acme.com/intro.html">

However I do realize that HTML 4.0 is a "recommendation" and I
agree with the recommendation that the syntax be adjusted to what
you list in the example. It's just that the current language in
the docs make it sound like there are user agents which support
the recommended syntax, which I don't think is the case.

Mike

Received on Thursday, 21 May 1998 18:57:39 UTC