[microformats-discuss] Developer Adoption

[Andy Hume]

Hi guys,

Sorry to interrupt the heavy spec brainstorming going on here (it  
makes my evening train journey's fly by ;)) but I'd like to run  
something by you guys.

My thoughts are increasingly turning to getting some of the more  
refined formats (ie, hcal, ical, hreview, etc) into the minds of the  
real world developers out there. It's all very well them coming along  
to mf.org, but so many of them are not understanding what this is all  
about. They're lost in the noise of some pretty exciting, but  
daunting 'speccy' talk.

IMHO these early formats will be the key to encouraging developer  
uptake because they work here and now, and can be useful in a real  
world way. Do we need a developer adoption drive?

I run a developer site called UsableType (http://usabletype.com),  
(which unfortunately, due to work has had a near 6 month hiatus - but  
still appears to have hundreds of feed subscribers) and I am  
currently writing a piece for it regarding microformats and more  
specifically the hcard format. It is very basic stuff - but the crux  
of it is showing how hcard can be useful *now* (mainly through X2V),  
and something of a 'call to action' encouraging designers/developers  
top spare the 10 minutes it would take to add their contact details  
to an hcard on their blogs/portfolio's home page.

What are your feelings on this? And what specific mark-up example do  
you believe would be appropriate for this?

Would <address class="vcard"> be an appropriate way of declaring an  
hcard as specifically the authors details? And would it best be  
located just once on the home page, or on every page in the footer?

Thoughts on this, and in general, are appreciated.

Cheers,

Andy.


______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email 
______________________________________________________________________