Low This Hint is of the lowest significance, and should only be addressed if there are not more serious issues which have not been handled. Issue This Hint represents an error or problem that needs to be fixed.

Meta charset is not the first element in <head>

URLs that specify the character set in the <head>, where it is not the first element.

Why is this important?

It is important to specify a character set as early as possible to allow the browser to begin parsing HTML and executing scripts immediately, which reduces latency time. Ideally, this would be done in the HTTP response header, but if this is not possible, then it should be the first element in the <head>.

What does the Hint check?

This Hint will trigger for any internal URL that contains a charset in the <head>, where it is not the first element.

Note: this Hint will not trigger if the charset was already specified in the HTTP header.

Examples that trigger this Hint:

The Hint would trigger for any URL where the meta charset is not the first element in the <head>:

<head>
 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> 
 <meta charset="UTF-8">
 ...
 <link href="/css/base.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/> 
 <script src="/templates/main/js/modernizr.custom.99144.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
 ...
</head>

How do you resolve this issue?

It is recommended to always specify the character set on the server-side whenever possible, via the HTTP headers.

Alternatively, if you do not have access to your server, ensure that the meta charset is the very first element in the <head>.

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