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HTML

Posted by Kieran Barker
Kieran Barker
15,028 Points

In an HTML document, does the order of the elements nested inside a <head> ... </head> element matter?

Say I had the following HTML document...

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>My example page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>My example page</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Does the order of the elements inside the <head> ... </head> element matter? For example, does it matter if the <meta> element comes before the <title> ... </title> element, or vice versa?

Brandon Benefield
Brandon Benefield
7,739 Points

I don't think it will affect your page if you order your elements differently but there is definitely a best practice that you should follow. A quick google search shows quite a few results.
Links:
https://adamhollett.com/posts/2016/07/best-order-for-elements-in-head-tags/
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27086085/why-does-the-order-of-the-link-elements-in-head-matter

Just to name a few results.

Kieran Barker
Kieran Barker
15,028 Points

A quick google search shows quite a few results.

Thank you, Brandon! I did conduct a search but must have used the wrong search terms — I couldn't seem to get the same results for some reason!

Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn
4,432 Points

I don't think it matters as far as <meta> and <title> tags or even generally where you place the <link> or <script> tags in relation to the others, but the order you load the specific <link> and <script> tags is very important. It loads them in order, so if you have a script that depends on another script being loaded, you better have it come second. This can also cause problems with stylesheets. I spent more time than I care to admit with this on some of my first projects where I was loading different javascript libraries.