[uf-discuss] Getting started with microformats

[Erica Douglass]

Hi Chris,

I totally agree. Tantek and I were talking about this at Wordcamp --
how people don't really "get" microformats until they see them in
action. I marked up a sidebar calendar on my blog with the event
microformats and want to use that as one case study. I am sure there
are many others.

The problem I have, as Iam sure most of you do too, is time. I have
been asked by several people to submit my modified Wordpress plugin as
a real plugin, but I'm a weirdo perfectionist and want to get a bunch
more things working (lke URLs for each event) before I do that. The
problem is that I need to find a few hours in a day to specifically
devote to doing that, and at this point, I'm not sure where those will
come from.

I would say the first thing to do would be to collect other case
studies and get notes from those who are using them. One case study
for each microformat group would probably do quite well. Then, once
those case studies have been collected, someone needs to "rubber-band"
them together and put them up in a cohesive manner on the microformats
website. This is also something I could do if I had more time...but I
want to get my plugin done first.

What say ye?

-Erica

On 8/9/06, Chris Messina <chris.messina at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I had the question posed to me yet again:
>
> "Ok, we know we should do microformats... but we're not sure where to
> start. Can you help us out?"
>
> Seeing as how I'm probably not alone here, I was going to create a
> "Getting started with microformats" page when I discovered a bunch of
> confused pages that seem to be half-hearted attempts to solve this
> problem:
>
> * http://microformats.org/wiki/introduction
> * http://microformats.org/wiki/what-can-you-do-with-microformats
> * http://microformats.org/wiki/implement
> * http://microformats.org/wiki/getting-started
>
> They all seem to start with definitions and then run out of steam.
>
> I would like to propose (and yes, this means work at some point, but
> for now I'm raising the issue) that we create a well-written and
> straight forward page that does answer the question: "I'm ready to get
> started, so where do I begin?"
>
> We could offer either a case study ("XCorp started by locating all
> references to people and locations on their website. They then marked
> up their pages using hcard. Specifically, this is the code they
> changed..."). or we could offer general step-by-step instructions for
> people who have flat HTML or database powered content... or, as I
> mentioned before, for people using various tools, we could suggest
> that they switch libraries or themes, for example, using the Sandbox
> theme in WordPress.
>
> In any case, I need a page to point to that will answer this question
> for me... and so rather than dive right in, I thought I'd solicit
> recommendations for other folks -- this page should be in the form of
> an FAQ, but in the form of actionable information -- hell, make a
> screencast -- but whatever it turns out to be, it should answer that
> question succinctly and clearly: *once you've convinced someone they
> should use microformats, what is the next most simple and satisfying
> step that they can take to implement microformats?*
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Chris Messina
> Agent Provocateur, Citizen Agency &
>  Open Source Ambassador-at-Large
> Work: http://citizenagency.com
> Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog
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> Skype: factoryjoe
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