[uf-discuss] Enumerating Microformats on a Page

[Phil Haack]

> If you know what you're looking for, you'll find it. 
> If you don't know what you're looking for, why are you 
> looking for it?

Why?  Serendipity.

Sometimes you don't know you're looking for something till you find it.  One
tenet of usable design, for example, is discoverability.  Why not make
Microformats more discoverable?  You put it there for a reason. Let's make
it easy to find.

Let me contrast this to the RSS aggregator situation.  With RSS Bandit for
example, I can subscribe to a feed by simply entering the URL to a person's
home page.  RSS Bandit auto-discovers any feeds on the page and then
displays a list of feeds if more than one exists. I can choose the one I
want and now I'm subscribed.

I can envision something similar with Microformats.  Suppose I point my
brand spanking new Microformats enabled RSS Bandit towards
http://glazkov.com/ and it pops up a list of various Microformats on that
page. Wonderful!

The bummer is that I may miss out on your Down Home Alabama/Russian Fusion
Cuisine Recipes which just happen to be on another page.  Why deny the world
a grits and salted herring dish?

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org
[mailto:microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of Dimitri
Glazkov
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 7:18 AM
To: Microformats Discuss
Subject: Re: [uf-discuss] Enumerating Microformats on a Page

This has been an on-and-off discussion that ought to be documented
somewhere -- well, at least its progress. I wouldn't say that there's
a total agreement on how it should be done, but here's my opinionated
take:

If you know what you're looking for, you'll find it. If you don't know
what you're looking for, why are you looking for it?

Look at Tails (http://blog.codeeg.com/tails-firefox-extension) -- it
finds everything it understands, and nothing else. It won't find
hAtom, because it doesn't understand it. And it's perfectly fine -- if
you don't hAtom, I don't want you to be looking for it.

:DG<