[microformats-discuss] Extending the embedded information

[Ryan King]

On Jul 1, 2005, at 3:03 PM, Carl Beeth wrote:
> I'm very excited about the microformats, seems I have been looking for
> something like this for ages. I Even found a old mail from 98 in the
> w3c html discussion list where we talk along those lines.
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1998Apr/0016.html>
>
> Although I am all for embedding semantics in web pages, I'm missing
> one thing in the microformats: a way to semantically link to more
> complete version of the information when one does not want to pollute
> the page with all the information.

We don't have a universal solution for this situation at the current  
time. However, in the given example, there are possible solutions.

> ...
>
> Now what if we wanted to have a to make more information available
> with out necessarily displaying it in the web page. maybe something
> like this:
>
> <div class="vcard">
>  <a class="url fn" href="http://tantek.com/">
>   Tantek Çelik
>  </a>
>  <div class="org">Technorati</div>
>  <a href="http://tantek.com/vcard.txt" class="vcardfile">vcard</a>
> </div>

First, you could always put the info on the page, but use a  
display:none to hide it.

Second, one of the observations that led to the creation of XFN, was  
that we already use urls as a proxy to identify people. Given that,  
why can't the link above (http://tantek.com) be enough? Tantek could  
certainly have an identifying vcard on that page, or could link to it  
with a rel="me".

Perhaps there are other opinions here?

> The reason the class is important in on the link is that it allows the
> user agent/crawler to identify what is behind the link.

Actually, a rel attribute would probably be better than a class value.

> ...

-ryan

--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com
AIM: kingryan331