Microformat

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Microformats

Abbreviation	μF
Status	Published
Year started	2005
Latest version	Microformats2 May 2010; 13 years ago (2010-05)
Related standards	Microdata (HTML), RDF, RDF Schema, OWL
Domain	Semantic Web
Website	microformats.org

Microformats (μF)

As of 2013[update], microformats allow the encoding and extraction of event details, contact information, social relationships and similar information.

Microformats2 abbreviated as mf2 is the updated version of microformats. Mf2 provides a more easy way of interpreting HTML(hypertext Markup Language) structured syntax and vocabularies than the earlier ways that made use of RDFa and microdata.^[4]

Background

Microformats emerged around 2005^{[note 2]} as part of a grassroots movement to make recognizable data items (such as events, contact details or geographical locations) capable of automated processing by software, as well as directly readable by end-users.^{[3][note 3]} Link-based microformats emerged first. These include vote links that express opinions of the linked page, which search engines can tally into instant polls.^[5]

CommerceNet, a nonprofit organization that promotes e-commerce on the Internet, has helped sponsor and promote the technology and support the microformats community in various ways.^[5] CommerceNet also helped co-found the Microformats.org community site.^[5]

Neither CommerceNet nor Microformats.org operates as a

XHTML and HTML standards allow for the embedding and encoding of semantics within the attributes of markup elements. Microformats take advantage of these standards by indicating the presence of metadata using the following attributes:

class

Classname

rel

relationship, description of the target address in an anchor-element (<a href=... rel=...>...</a>)

rev

reverse relationship, description of the referenced document (in one case, otherwise deprecated in microformats^[6])

For example, in the text "The birds roosted at 52.48, -1.89" is a pair of numbers which may be understood, from their context, to be a set of

The birds roosted at
   <span class="geo">
     <span class="latitude">52.48</span>,
     <span class="longitude">-1.89</span>
   </span>

 <ul>
   <li>Joe Doe</li>
   <li>The Example Company</li>
   <li>604-555-1234</li>
   <li><a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a></li>
 </ul>

 <ul class="vcard">
   <li class="fn">Joe Doe</li>
   <li class="org">The Example Company</li>
   <li class="tel">604-555-1234</li>
   <li><a class="url" href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a></li>
 </ul>

Specific microformats

Several microformats have been developed to enable semantic markup of particular types of information. However, only hCard and hCalendar have been ratified, the others remaining as drafts:

• Atom
  feeds from within standard HTML
• hCalendar – for events
• hCard – for contact information; includes:
  • adr – for postal addresses
  • geo – for geographical coordinates (latitude, longitude)
• hMedia – for audio/video content^[7][8]
• hAudio – for audio content
• hNews – for news content
• hProduct – for products
• hRecipe – for recipes and foodstuffs.
• hReview – for reviews
• rel-
  directory – for distributed directory creation and inclusion^[9]
• rel-enclosure – for multimedia attachments to web pages[10]
• rel-license – specification of copyright license^[11]
• rel-nofollow, an attempt to discourage third-party content spam (e.g. spam in blogs)
• rel-tag – for decentralized tagging (Folksonomy)^[12]
• XHTML Friends Network (XFN) – for social relationships
• XOXO – for lists and outlines

Uses

Using microformats within HTML code provides additional formatting and semantic data that applications can use. For example, applications such as web crawlers can collect data about online resources, or desktop applications such as e-mail clients or scheduling software can compile details. The use of microformats can also facilitate "mash ups" such as exporting all of the geographical locations on a web page into (for example) Google Maps to visualize them spatially.

Several browser extensions, such as

Microsoft said in 2006 that they needed to incorporate microformats into upcoming projects,^[19] as did other software companies.

Alex Faaborg summarizes the arguments for putting the responsibility for microformat user interfaces in the web browser rather than making more complicated HTML:^[20]

• Only the web browser knows what applications are accessible to the user and what the user's preferences are
• It lowers the barrier to entry for web site developers if they only need to do the markup and not handle "appearance" or "action" issues
• Retains backwards compatibility with web browsers that don't support microformats
• The web browser presents a single point of entry from the web to the user's computer, which simplifies security issues

Evaluation

Various commentators have offered review and discussion on the design principles and practical aspects of microformats. Microformats have been compared to other approaches that seek to serve the same or similar purpose.

Computer scientist and entrepreneur, Rohit Khare stated that reduce, reuse, and recycle is "shorthand for several design principles" that motivated the development and practices behind microformats.^{[5]: 71–72} These aspects can be summarized as follows:

• Reduce: favor the simplest solutions and focus attention on specific problems;
• Reuse: work from experience and favor examples of current practice;
• Recycle: encourage modularity and the ability to embed, valid XHTML can be reused in blog posts, RSS feeds, and anywhere else you can access the web.^[5]

Accessibility

Because some microformats make use of title attribute of HTML's <abbr> element to conceal

Microformats are not the only solution for providing "more intelligent data" on the web; alternative approaches are used and are under development. For example, the use of XML markup and standards of the Semantic Web are cited as alternative approaches.^[5] Some contrast these with microformats in that they do not necessarily coincide with the design principles of "reduce, reuse, and recycle", at least not to the same extent.^[5]

One advocate of microformats, Tantek Çelik, characterized a problem with alternative approaches:

Here's a new language we want you to learn, and now you need to output these additional files on your server. It's a hassle. (Microformats) lower the barrier to entry.^[3]

For some applications the use of other approaches may be valid. If the type of data to be described does not map to an existing microformat, RDFa can embed arbitrary vocabularies into HTML, such as for example domain-specific scientific data such as zoological or chemical data for which there is no microformat. Standards such as W3C's GRDDL allow microformats to be converted into data compatible with the Semantic Web.^[28]

Another advocate of microformats, Ryan King, put the compatibility of microformats with other approaches this way:

Microformats provide an easy way for many people to contribute semantic data to the web. With GRDDL all of that data is made available for RDF Semantic Web tools. Microformats and GRDDL can work together to build a better web.^[28]

Microformats 2

Microformats2 was proposed and discussed during FOOEast, 2010-05-02.^[29] Microformats2 was intended to make it easier for authors to publish microformats and for developers to consume them, while remaining backwards compatible^[30]

Using microformats2, the example above would be marked up as:

The birds roosted at
   <span class="h-geo geo">
     <span class="p-latitude latitude">52.48</span>,
     <span class="p-longitude longitude">-1.89</span>
   </span>

and:

 <ul class="h-card vcard">
   <li class="p-name fn">Joe Doe</li>
   <li class="p-org org">The Example Company</li>
   <li class="p-tel tel">604-555-1234</li>
   <li><a class="u-url url" href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a></li>
 </ul>

See also

• COinS
• Embedded RDF
• Microdata (HTML)
• Intelligent agents
• JSON-LD
• RDFa Lite
• S5 (file format)
• Schema.org
• Simple HTML Ontology Extensions
• XMDP

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

• Allsopp, John (March 2007). Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0.
  ISBN 978-1-59059-814-6
  .
• Orchard, Leslie M (September 2005). Hacking RSS and Atom.
  ISBN 978-0-7645-9758-9
  .
• ISBN 978-0-596-00987-8
  .

Further reading

• Suda, Brian (September 2006). Using Microformats.
  ISBN 978-0-596-52821-8
  .
• Ahmet Soylu, Patrick De Causmaecker, Fridolin Wild Ubiquitous Web for Ubiquitous Environments: The Role of Embedded Semantics, article in Journal of Mobile Multimedia, Vol. 6, No.1, pp. 26–48, (2010). PDF

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Microformat screenshots.

• microformats.org
• Microformats Primer
• Optimus microformats parser and validator
• A four-part discussion of Microformats, UI issues, and possible presentation in Firefox 3 by Alex Faaborg of Mozilla