[uf-discuss] ANN: The Purpose of Microformats

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 10/14/06 1:50 PM, "Costello, Roger L." <costello at mitre.org> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> I have written a short presentation titled, The Purpose of
> Microformats.
> 
> http://www.xfront.com/microformats/Purpose-of-Microformats.html
> 
> I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Roger, this looks *excellent*.

One major comment.

What you have described is not the purpose of microformats.

What you have described is the purpose of using semantic class names, which
modern web developers have been doing in large numbers since 2002, and
originally as early as some of the earliest work that Dan Connolly did at
W3C.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/semantic-class-names

Microformats are *much* more than just using semantic class names, and
unless you cover the differences, then it may actually cause *more*
confusion to people if they get the impression that simply by using semantic
values in the class attribute, that they are using microformats.

E.g. here is a slide from a recent presentation that touches on some of the
key differences:

 http://tantek.com/presentations/2006/09/microformats-practices/#slide23

Thanks,

Tantek