[uf-discuss] microformats for normal people, like my mum

[Frances Berriman]

On 28/06/07, Jon Tan <microformats at gr0w.com> wrote:
> Frances Berriman wrote:
> > [...]  As is the microformats
> > principle, perhaps we should see what turns up naturally in the wild
> > as the way people describe such pages and go with that as a guide.
>
> Maybe this is over simplistic but my mum understands "download".

Agreed.  My mother doesn't often use (or even understand) terms like
semantic or meta-data or even extraction.  Download she gets.  She
knows it means she's taking something from a webpage and putting it
somewhere else. Simple.  How that's done she couldn't give a monkies
about and, frankly, should never HAVE to know.

> That seems to me to be the most natural and ubiquitous term understood
> in the wild by all people today.
>
> The option for a person to download and add a specific event, set of
> contact details etc. from a uF enabled page would seem to be an optimal
> outcome. Fundamentally, users are downloading that data first, then
> adding it to an application -- usually requiring an extra step to
> confirm that action in a dialogue box.
>
> Seeing the uF or downloads icon then a list of available uF "downloads"
> to cherry pick from would also be easily understood and used.

Agreed.  And no "re-branding" or user safe naming had to be done.  Why
invent problems that don't currently exist for users who want to
consume microformatted data?

Those who want to create pages with microformats and therefore your
"smart pages" are more-or-less two kinds of people - simple publishers
(like my dad and his blog, for example) or actual web developers like
ourselves.

The first kind of people don't want to (and shouldn't have to) touch
the mark-up so their publishing tools should be doing it for them and
the second kind ought to be able to cope with the term "microformats"
to describe what they are doing.


-- 
Frances Berriman
http://fberriman.com