Automatically loading and reloading pages

The most common use for the <meta> tag is to automatically reload a page on a regular basis or to load a new page in a specified time. Microsoft refers to this as Client Pull.

For example, to reload a page every two seconds, enter:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2">

You set the http-equiv attribute to refresh to tell the browser to reload the page. The content attribute specifies the time in seconds before the browser automatically reloads the page.

You can also specify any URL in the tag to tell the browser which page to load. For example, to load a new page after 10 seconds, enter:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=newhome.html">

You might use this technique to redirect users to another page if your pages move around on the server or to another server.