Content Type Question

[jonahb webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

I have a question concerning the content type of an HTML file. I have a perl script that outputs the source of an HTML file. However, when I view this perl script in Mozilla, the script output appears as the HTML source code, not as the HTML page itself. When I add the line "content-type: text/html" to the top of the file, the script is displayed as HTML.

Why does this single line of code matter? And what is the difference between this and the following line of HTML:

"<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">"

I don't understand the difference of the two and why the former is more important. Can anyone shed any light on this for me?

Thanks,
Jonah B.

Jonah Bishop
JGB Productions

[Chris In Madison]

I'm guessing that the extension of your page is probably either .cgi or .pl.
Since these are raw text files anyway, if the browser doesn't know how to
translate them, then you'll probably end up with text on the screen.
Usually, the browser is set up to translate HTML if the extension is also
..htm(l). No problems there. But anything else, it doesn't necessarily
know. However, if the browser sees the content type in there, then it can
parse it properly.

I ran into a similar problem a while back with .hcsp files, the proprietary
extension for our content management system. Adding the content type to the
page, as well as setting the mime type on the server to text/html, fixed the
problem for me in all cases and all browsers.

Best regards,
Chris