[uf-discuss] Avatar Microformat ?

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello,

On 11/24/05, Chris Messina <chris.messina at gmail.com> wrote:
> My first reaction was also to simply use vCard. The question then
> becomes whether you can have multiple photo fields in one hCard... per
> the vCard spec.

I don't know if a vCard would be the best way to go for this.  (Maybe
something more basic that a vCard could make use of.)

Consider the blogging sites that teenagers tend to use.  (Like myspace
or nexopia.)  They typically have "picures" loaded into there (on the
user's profile page)... like a gallery... that don't have anything to
do with contact info or anything like that.  These images are often
used as avatars.


> Additionally, I worry that in terms of the 80-20 rule, most people
> will not have many avatars and therefore a single representation in
> your hCard would be sufficient.

I've found that most people have alot of avatars and change them quite
often.  It seems to be especially common amoung those from "generation
Y" and younger.  And as these people get older, this will become more
common.

I terms of the demographic I'm interested in, most the people in this
"younger demographic" do have multiple avatars; and they tend to
change them quite alot.

> Microformats are for general purpose use, like flour and sugar. Using
> them you can build things as interesting as pizza or as simple as
> bread. However, a microformat for pizza would probably be
> inappropriate or not worth standardizing since its fundamental
> ingredients can be broken down further into more atomic units.

Agreed, but I think an "avatar" microformat is pretty basic.  It could
be a simple as something like rel-avatar.

> Avatars are simply hCard photos --

I disagree.  In fact, I'd say that hCards could use an avatar
microformat for it's photo.



See ya


> pulling out a specific avatar may
> be one of those cases which the microformats process would dictate
> that we stick to the basics... and not worry too much about edge
> cases.
>
> Chris
>
> On 11/24/05, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> > On 11/23/05 11:05 PM, "Charles Iliya Krempeaux" <supercanadian at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Is there a Micformat for specifying a user's Avatars?
> >
> > Could you be more specific about what you mean by an "Avatar"?
> >
> > Perhaps providing a URL to an example or two would help.
> >
> > > Anyone working
> > > on one?  (A Microformat where a user could specify a list of avatars
> > > that one uses would be preferable.)
> >
> > If you're speaking of Gravatars for example, then hCard already solves this
> > problem, as it provides the key pieces: url, email, fn, logo.
> >
> > > (I didn't find anything in the wiki about one.)
> >
> > Try the search box in the left column of the wiki.
> >
> > When I search the wiki for "Avatar", I found it on one page:
> >
> >  http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-post-formats
> >
> > Which only discussed an example of an existing blog post format that uses an
> > "Avatar" which *could* use hCard.
> >
> > But you're right.  We should at least provide a place to answer questions
> > like "how would I represent X", where X can potentially be represented using
> > an existing microformat.
> >
> > I've added Gravatars and a few other applications to a new section on the
> > hCard spec.
> >
> > http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Additional_Applications
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Tantek
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > microformats-discuss mailing list
> > microformats-discuss at microformats.org
> > http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
> >
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>


--
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
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