[uf-discuss] Microformats UI in Firefox 3

[Alex Faaborg]

My apologies if I'm reopening a long closed debate, I'll be sure to  
review the wiki page.

> Side A: Publishers should be able to specify UI elements for their
> Microformatted content in their HTML.
>
> Side B: The browser should be solely responsible for injecting UI into
> the page

I should note that people inside Mozilla have argued these two sides  
as well.  I'm personally in favor of A, or B if it is represented as  
a modal overlay.

> It is important that the Firefox developers not only think of
> Microformats, but eRDF, RDFa, and other semantic markup technologies
> that are coming down the pipeline.

Yeah, it would be great if whatever solution we came up with scaled  
across different semantic markup technologies.  The latest version of  
Operator now supports eRDF and RDFa.

-Alex


On Aug 28, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Manu Sporny wrote:

> Alex Faaborg wrote:
>> Yes, while previous Firefox designs have focused on the browser
>> injecting UI into the page, this discussion is about how the content
>> creator should provide links and buttons for acting on microformatted
>> content.
>
> I'm probably being a bit dense, but it looks like we're entering  
> into a
> philosophical debate. Without taking sides, it looks like the
> philosophical rift is this:
>
> Side A: Publishers should be able to specify UI elements for their
> Microformatted content in their HTML.
>
> Side B: The browser should be solely responsible for injecting UI into
> the page?
>
> This debate has been tracked on the wiki:
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/audio-info- 
> issues#Historical:_Graphic_buttons_in_rel-patterns
>
> The current resolution is to leave implementation for user actions  
> up to
> the browser and uF plug-ins. Without going into the nasty details,  
> which
> are fully documented on the wiki, there is opposition to directly
> specifying UI through uF markup. Microformats are about data, not UI.
>
> That being said, if there is a desire to add generic UI actions to any
> sort of semantic data (keep in mind eRDF and RDFa), the one idea that
> seems to be most compatible with "Microformats are about data" but  
> able
> to give the publishers of any semantic data some control over the  
> UI is
> the "uf:// protocol idea".
>
> Perhaps a generic set of "actions" that are defined by all semantic  
> data
> communities (uF, eRDF, RDFa, etc.). The assumption is that some  
> sort of
> ID mechanism is utilized. So for data like this:
>
> <div id='alex-faaborg' class='vcard'>...</div>
>
> Something like the following:
>
> <a href="action://addressbook/add/alex-faaborg">Add to address  
> book</a>
> <a href="action://addressbook/mail/alex-faaborg">E-mail Alex</a>
>
> Here are some other examples:
>
> action://map/find/eiffel-tower
> action://
>
> The above mechanism would allow people to specify default behaviors  
> for
> actions. Some could specify that "action://map/" is handled by Yahoo
> Maps, while others might choose Google Maps or Microsoft Streets  
> and Trips.
>
> It is important that the Firefox developers not only think of
> Microformats, but eRDF, RDFa, and other semantic markup technologies
> that are coming down the pipeline.
>
> -- manu
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