[microformats-discuss] hWidgets

[Chris Messina]

I'm with Ryan on this. Developing an hWidget standard out of the blue
that doesn't reflect current practices can result in a lot of spunt
wheels. ;)

Instead, start by documenting Dashboard Widgets, Microsoft Gadgets,
Konfabulator widgets and DojoToolkit widgets. They all have their own
formats, so they're a great place to begin your research.

>From there it seems we can start to develop the discussion around a
sensible microformat, if indeed one is necessary.

The one issue I see, however, is how you think this might be used?
Most microformats to date have been designed to represent visible data
that previously wasn't marked up in such a way as to identity the type
of content being expressed. Applying this axim to widgets seems a
little peculiar to me, since widgets are typically interactive
elements that often have little embedded semantic content.

In the clock example, it seems like, though you could use standard
classes for your component elements, the entire script lives in the
javascript file, hiding any semantic information until run-time. The
only microformatting you've proposed  is in your <link> tags, which
are already standardized as <link rel=stylesheet> and <script
src=></script>.

I guess this is something for Ryan and Tantek to mull over, but
initially -- though I love the idea of standardizing on semantic
classes and attributes for widget-like XHTML -- I'm just not sure that
microformats were intended for this particularly computer-focused
application.

Ryan, Tantek? Any thoughts?

Chris


On 9/23/05, Ryan King <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:
> On Sep 23, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Kevin Lawver wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >     I just joined the list yesterday, but have had an interest in
> > microformats for a while now, and have been promoting them within
> > my company (AOL) for a while now.  We're working on our first
> > "serious" microformat, which smells a lot like hWidget.  I've read
> > the whole thread on hWidget, and the only example I see is the
> > ticking clock.  Is there a profile for it yet, or is that example
> > the whole of hWidget?
>
> To be honest, hWidget is actually a bit out of line with the typical
> process we use for developing microformats [http://microformats.org/
> wiki/process].
>
> There was no documentation of current behavior, nor analysis of
> current schemas (explicit or implicit).
>
> >     I'll hopefully be releasing the first draft of our profile in
> > the next week or so (if I can get everyone to sign off on making it
> > public). I'll be sure to send it to the list, and I'd love your
> > feedback on it, and help making it as suitable for general use as
> > possible.
>
> You might want to take a look at http://microformats.org/wiki/process
> for ways to go about this.
>
> Thanks for your interest and welcome to the group.
> -ryan
>
> --
> Ryan King
> ryan at technorati.com
>
>
>
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