title: Proper placement of META tags with http-equiv attribute?
body: <p>I'm implementing Bing Maps on a page (I'd prefer Google Maps, but it's not my choice).  I'm following the tutorial MS provides here:  <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412551.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412551.aspx</a></p>
  
  <p>Using MS's code, everything worked just fine.  Fleshing it out with some of my own jQuery code, I found that I was getting a "Permission Denied" error every time I ran $.get(); I assumed this was some sort of "Same Origin" conflict, but after much checking, I determined that I wasn't requesting anything from any other host (not even www.example.com vs. example.com - everything was on the SAME host).</p>
  
  <p>After much frustration, I finally whittled the cause down to the META tag in MS's code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This was towards the bottom of my HEAD section.  In reading the spec. for the META tag (which I wasn't very familiar with), I found that some servers may translate http-equiv tags directly into HTTP headers, while others may just send them as-is.  Since I believe headers must be sent before any content, I moved the META tag to the BEGINING of the HEAD section, and everything worked fine.</p>
  
  <p>Another detail:  I only had problems in IE7.  When I tested in FF, I had no problems at all.</p>
  
  <p>So here's my question:  Are META tags with the http-equiv attribute SUPPOSED to be at the begining of the HEAD section?  Was IE just being weird?  Or was FF just being particularly forgiving?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>