View source for semantic-xhtml-design-principles

<h1>Semantic XHTML Design Principles</h1>

{{semantic-xhtml-design-principles}}

==Semantic XHTML and Microformats==
(from Tantek Çelik on the [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.microformats.general/6014 microformats-discuss mailing list])

Note that microformats use semantic XHTML, but not all use of semantic
XHTML are microformats.

Web designers and authors are using semantic XHTML everyday without using
microformats, and that's perfectly fine.  They are not trying to create
standards and interoperably/automatically exchange data with each other.
They are simply expressing the semantics of their documents.

Whereas microformats follow a specific process and are intended to provide
a way for publishers worldwide to easily interoperably exchange simple
bits of data.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/process

This distinction between "semantic XHTML" and "microformats" is very
important to understand and is often confused - I've even seen W3C staff
themselves call microformats "just using good class names", which is
incorrect.  (Using good class names is simply one of the practices of
semantic XHTML).