Yahoo Placemaker, Optimus update, and one click microformats validator

The recent microformats momentum from the introduction of the value-class-pattern and Google & Yelp’s support continues with the launch of Yahoo Placemaker™, an update to Optimus, the open source microformats validator, and a browser button that makes it easy to one-click validate your microformats.

Yahoo Placemaker Beta supports geo and adr microformats

Congratulations to Yahoo on their recent launch of ! Yahoo Placemaker extracts locations marked up with the and microformats from web pages. See the Yahoo Placemaker documentation for details.

Optimus updated to v0.8 and supports value-title

, the open source microformats transformer that also happens to do an excellent job as a validator, has been updated to version 0.8.

Optimus v0.8 supports the recently developed ‘s “value-title” functionality. Optimus now also has its own twitter account that you can follow, . For microupdates on microformats in general, follow the twitter.

Get the Optimus microformats validator browser button

It’s hard to believe some of the first validation browser buttons* (for HTML, CSS, and links) were written over ten years ago, and now there’s one more:

> Optimus microformats validator

In most browsers, simply drag and drop the above “> Optimus microformats validator” link to your “Links Toolbar” / “Bookmarks Bar” / “Favorites Bar”. The Technorati Browser Buttons page has good additional installation instructions for browser buttons for various browsers.

Then go to any of your pages with microformats, click the newly created “> Optimus microformats validator” button in your browser toolbar, and read the validator report for suggested fixes and improvements to your microformats markup.

With both Google and Yahoo now indexing microformats like and , use the Optimus microformats validator to debug your microformats. Additional tools can be found on the .

*Browser buttons were originally called or . However, Google’s documentation calls them “Browser Buttons” which sounds much friendlier and free of tech-jargon origins.

2 Responses to “Yahoo Placemaker, Optimus update, and one click microformats validator”

  1. PHPmoz :

    I would prefer to call them browser buttons as well. Thanks for the wonderful information. Keep up the good work Ben.

    June 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am

  2. Mmorpg :

    Haha, It’s funny because I call them Browser buttons too :). The new Yahoo Placemaker a novel concept, I like it.

    August 8th, 2009 at 2:56 am