[uf-new] Navigation Menu and "Standard Web Page" microformats

[Paul R. Bohman]

I've been looking around to try to find an existing microformat for
navigation menus and other "standard web page" items, but so far I've
been unsuccessful. Does such a microformat exist?

The navigation microformat could be something as simple as:

<ul class="nav">
<li><a href="whatever">Menu menu item 1</li>
<li><a href="whatever2">Main menu item 2</li>
</ul>

And the possibility would exist for submenu items, which wouldn't need
to have class="nav", but they could.

Benefits: Primarily to allow screen readers, browsers, and other user
agents to recognize where the main menu is for the web page. This
would allow users to skip past menu items without requiring web
developers to include a "skip navigation" link.

Along those same lines...

Is there a microformat (or perhaps more accurately a "metaformat") to
describe the basic structure of common web pages?

For example, the vast majority of web pages on the web could be
described in these terms:

header
navigation
content
footer

Those would probably be the core items, but other optional areas that
could be defined:

* logo (or "site identity" or something like that)
* sidebar
* ad (advertisers would probably object to this, as it would allow
easy scripting to remove ads, but it still could be a useful
designation for users at least)
* help
* ... and perhaps others


Of course, not all web pages would fit this format, but that's fine.
That's why it's a microformat, right? Anyway, what, if anything, has
been done along these lines?


-- 
Paul R. Bohman
Faculty, College of Education & Human Development
Lead Architect of Web Services, Office of Technology Support
Technology Coordinator, Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities
George Mason University