[uf-discuss] article on microformats

[Ben Ward]

Hi Igor,

On 16 Mar 2008, at 06:43, Igor Wawrzyniak wrote:
> 1) In my article I wrote that the community behind microformats began
> as a sort of grasroots movement, involving enthusiasts: bloggers,
> wikipedia editors, people who were into
> social-networking sites and other web 2.0 ideas etc. Only later it
> gained support of software companies and standarization bodies.
>
> Do you agree with that summary? Remember I need to keep it short, it's
> only an introduction, I'm mostly writing about technology.

Best to have Tantek, Eric or one of the other Technorati alumni  
answer that, since they were here in the very beginning.

I think it would be inaccurate to say that it has the support of  
‘standardisation bodies’. The microformats are designed and built  
within this community, and don't get rubber stamped by any other  
body. The existence of microformats is acknowledged elsewhere, of  
course, and the spread of hCalendar is probably a principal factor in  
HTML5 having a new <t>ime element.

> 3) On a more technical note. I'm confused about a rel-tag. Let's say I
> run a website that has it's internal tagging system, each post is
> concluded with a few links: this article belongs to category <this>,
> <that> and <yet another>. I can also ocassionally link to an external
> site that supports tagging, like del.icio.us. Do i include a rel-tag
> on:
> - internal links
> - external links
> - both?

Where you are linking from your content (say a blog post) to a tag  
space (whether that's Technorati or your own site), you should use  
rel-tag to indicate that the two pages have a tag relationship.

> FAQ says I'm not supposed to use rel-tag on links in a tag-cloud, why?

Where you use the ‘rel’ attribute, you are saying ‘The page I'm  
linking to is a <something> for this page’. So in a blog entry,  
rel=tag means ‘The ‘/tags/microformats’ page I'm linking to is a TAG  
for this page’. It's a more subtle meaning than ‘this _is_ a tag’.

A tag _cloud_ is an aggregation of tags for multiple pieces of  
content. If you put rel=tag on the tags in a tag cloud, you would be  
saying ‘this is a tag _for the current page_’, which is not what a  
tag cloud represents.

Hope that helps,

Ben