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INTRODUCTION TO HTTP HEADERS

You've probably written a CGI program or two and are aware that you must output the line "Content-Type: text/html" prior to sending a CGI generated HTML document.
This line of text is only one of many possible "HTTP Headers". Each page returned to your browser contains many headers that are provided by the web-server. Below is a simple example of what might be typically returned by a web server to your browser.

Example Response


HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Monday, 28-Oct-96 17:25:32 GMT
Server: NCSA/1.3
MIME-version: 1.0
Last-modified: Monday, 28-Oct-96 10:12:23 GMT
Content-type: text/html
Content-length: 89

<html>
<head><title>Some Page</title></head>
<body>Some text on the page</body>
</html>


As this section developes, I'll explain what all these and other headers mean to the browser. Along the way you'll learn some nifty tricks both for increasing performance as well as achieving effects not otherwise possible. Some of the headers can also be exploited by the tag and http-equiv. One can also consult the documentation at W3C regarding HTTP at W3C - PROTOCOLS


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