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When charset is set inside the SEO component, it's placed after the title tag #91

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ttmc opened this issue Feb 24, 2024 · 7 comments
Open

When charset is set inside the SEO component, it's placed after the title tag #91

ttmc opened this issue Feb 24, 2024 · 7 comments
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@jonasmerlin
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@ttmc
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ttmc commented Feb 24, 2024

These days, a typical HTML5 file will begin something like:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    ...
    <title>Title comes later</title>

The meta charset tag is almost always the first tag inside the head tag, because the HTML5 specification suggests placing the charset declaration within the first 1024 bytes of the document.

Placing the charset declaration first clarifies the character encoding for the entire document, including the title, ensuring proper interpretation of characters. While modern browsers are robust, in rare cases, placing the title before the charset might lead to rendering issues, especially if the title includes non-ASCII characters.

The SEO component provided by astro-seo lets one set the value of charset. If one does that, the generated HTML has the title tag before the charset declaration. That is an issue.

Thoughts on How to Fix this Issue

The first thing you might be tempted to do is put the meta charset tag first, before the title tag. The problem with that is that there might be lots of other tags before the SEO component, inside the head tag. The SEO component has no control over those tags. They're put there by the user of the SEO component, not by the SEO component itself.

The final generated HTML should have the charset declaration first (inside the head tag), yet the SEO component can't do that.

Moreover, the charset declaration isn't really an SEO thing anyhow. It's more like the meta viewport tag.

Therefore, my conclusion is that the SEO component provided by astro-seo should be changed to no longer accept a value for charset, and it should no longer try to set it. Anyone who tries to use the SEO component to set charset should be told it's being deprecated and they should just set it manually, first thing inside the head tag. Then in the future, the charset prop could be removed from the SEO component completely.
@jonasmerlin
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@ttmc Thank you for this great report and thorough engagement with the issue. This is greatly appreciated and I think I agree that the best move here might be to deprecate the attribute.

Another possibility would be to run some JS that would always put the tag as the first child of the head. What's your opinion on that?

@jonasmerlin jonasmerlin self-assigned this Feb 25, 2024
@jonasmerlin jonasmerlin added bug Something isn't working help wanted Extra attention is needed waiting for feedback labels Feb 25, 2024
@jonasmerlin jonasmerlin mentioned this issue Feb 25, 2024
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@ttmc
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ttmc commented Feb 25, 2024

@jonasmerlin You wrote:

Another possibility would be to run some JS that would always put the tag as the first child of the head. What's your opinion on that?

Yes, that might be a better solution. I was reluctant to suggest it because it's a bit weird for a component to be reaching outside its boundaries and adding a tag elsewhere in the document. Maybe also check if there's already a charset declaration before doing anything...

@ttmc
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ttmc commented Feb 26, 2024 •
edited

If you do decide to use JavaScript to check for an existing charset declaration, and to inject one at the top of the head if necessary, you will have to be very careful to make sure that JavaScript code runs at the right time.

If you run it at build time (inside the --- fences at the top of an .astro component file), then what HTML "document" is it going to inspect / inject-into? If you put it in the <script> tag of the .astro component file, then that will get injected at the end of the head tag and the user agent / browser won't execute it until it's too late: it will already be done reading/executing the part of the head where the charset declaration should be.

The JavaScript should run after-building but before-deploying the generated HTML documents. Good news: Astro integrations can do that, see https://docs.astro.build/en/reference/integrations-reference ... I've never done that but I guess you can look at existing integrations like @astrojs/sitemap to see how they work.

@jonasmerlin
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@ttmc Thank you for your insights on this, these are very helpful! I wanted to sit down to implement this today, but I don't think I have enough time to turn this into an integration and see if this works. Might I ask if you would be willing to give this a try and then do a PR for this?

@ttmc
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ttmc commented Mar 3, 2024

I was thinking more about what it would take to insert the charset declaration after-the-fact, into a fully-built website (i.e. all generated HTML files) and realized that wow, this is nuts, way beyond what the user of an SEO component would expect it to do.

Maybe the easiest solution is the following:

  1. Change the README.md file in a few small ways. Change "In any of your Astro pages, import Astro SEO and then use the component inside the <head> section of your HTML:" to "In any of your Astro pages, import Astro SEO and then use the component first thing inside the <head> section of your HTML:"
  2. In the sample HTML code, insert an HTML comment first thing after the <head> tag like so:
---
import { SEO } from "astro-seo";
---

<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <!-- (DELETE THIS COMMENT) Please note that the SEO component will insert
         a meta charset declaration first (with default value UTF-8) and
         a meta viewport declaration second; you don't need to do that yourself. -->
    <SEO
      title="A Very Descriptive Title"
      ...

(Also, make sure the default charset is "UTF-8". Also I would have the default meta viewport declaration as <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> )

I think these changes are much more straightforward to make, and they don't cause the SEO component to do anything surprising.

@millette
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I don't really like the idea of using client-side js to place charset ahead of the rest. Maybe things changed, but I remember browsers read a page until they hit the charset and might reload (not visible to the user) after that.

I'm starting to think the best option would be NOT to support charset (warn if used) and let the user insert the meta charset where necessary.

@Mansi1
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Mansi1 commented Apr 4, 2024

Regarding the SEO library for Astro, while the charset and viewport metadata is crucial for rendering, it's not directly tied to SEO. Let's prioritize optimizing SEO elements, including interesting meta tags and maintain best practices for usability.

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