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JavaScript Treehouse Club: JavaScript Car Sounds Introduction to the HTML Document and Uploading a Picture

Steven Bell
Steven Bell
852 Points

I understand that charset means character set, but I don't know what the <meta charset="utf-8"> is. What does it mean?

I have been trying to follow along to the videos very closely and I think I'm taking very good notes on a notebook while I watch each video, and I don't remember the meta tag being explained. Sorry if you did and I just missed it. But could someone please explain the <meta> tag and what it's use in HTML is for? Thanks!

1 Answer

Richard Lu
Richard Lu
20,185 Points

Hey Steven,

From what I understand, this line:

<meta charset="utf-8">

is to tell the browser that every character in this page can be translated to ASCII. Here's a reference to an ASCII chart if you're curious: http://www.asciitable.com/