- History of the web
- Browser war
- XML
- Combine semantic language with something that's standard across all browsers
- Use tools that you already have to markup document semantically
- principles:
- solve a specific problem (find standard classes, i.e something that's being solved over and over e.g. re-using Vcard standard and code, and iCal i.e already in wild but not in XHTML)
- start as simple as possible (e.g. playlists - media in a certain order)
- playlist people want 40 classes
- simple test - can people remember classes
- perhaps reuse XOXO (outline format) for playlist? i.e. so don't need 40 classes
- reuse building blocks (iCal, vCard)
- use modularity and embeddablity (hcard + iCal = birthday reminder)
- enable and encourage decentralized and distributed content
- reduce - solve a specific problem , start as simple as possible
- spread out the work
- Example 1 - rel tag
- used in flickr, technorati, gada.be
- e.g. rel="tag", assign keywords to stuff
- not just for technorati, can use tag space in your url space not Technorati's!
- Tags = Categories 2.0 :-) !
- Boris - wiki.bryght.com to make it work with drupal using path-auto
- rel-directory - distributed directory <a rel = "tag directory" href="http://technorati.com/blogs/webzine">Webzine</a>, hmmm OPML?
- XFN - extensible friends network, FOAF is RDF version e.g. <a rel="acquaintenance met">Tantek</a>
- hCalendar
- made text field names in iCal field names into XHML spans (make them into XHMTL classes that has have semantic meaning) and voila hCalendar, can be done via XSLT
- same with hCard
- rel-license - this content on this page is governed by this license
- vote-links = precursor to rel nofollow, vote-for, vote-abstain, vote-against
- geo for geotagging
- rel payment for affiliate links
- summary: no longer slinging classes and making up the names, have standard names for CSS and XHTML classes
- my take: microformats are the "worse is better" approach to getting structured data into HTML and XHTML, so simple u can handcode and trivial to put into Drupal and other automated blogging and content management systems
- How stable: for those based on iCal and Vcal i.e. existing popular standards, it's stable
- actually have a process for building a microformat ("paving the cowpaths")
Original publication
This post was originally published on October 18, 2005 on The Standard, the Raincity Studios blog, credited to “Roland Tanglao”. This post reflects the context and tools of its time; some links and services mentioned no longer exist.