Main Page

Microformats Wiki

Please read how-to-play before making any edits.

Please read process before proposing any new microformats.

Introduction

What are microformats? And what can you do with them? See the about page for an overview, and the introduction page for more info. Recent press, presentations, podcasts, and screencasts are also a good place for some background reading/listening. Frequently asked questions are answered in the faq. Want something or want to contribute? Help with things to-do. Want to learn more in person? Check out microformats events.

One popular definition from our mailing list (see also: mailing-lists) is "simple conventions for embedding semantics in HTML to enable decentralized development." More precisely, microformats can be defined as:

simple conventions

for embedding semantic markup

for a specific problem domain

in human-readable (X)HTML/XML documents, Atom/RSS feeds, and "plain" XML

that normalize existing content usage patterns

using brief, descriptive class names

often based on existing interoperable standards

to enable decentralized development

of resources, tools, and services

"Or do you just use your browser to browse? That's so 20th century." -- Mark Pilgrim

Specifications

Microformats open standards specifications (see also: implementations)

• hCalendar
• hCard
• rel-license
• rel-nofollow
• rel-tag
• VoteLinks
• XFN (see also: xfn-implementations)
• XMDP
• XOXO

Drafts

• adr
• geo
• hAtom new!
• hResume new!
• hReview
• rel-directory
• rel-enclosure
• rel-home
• rel-payment
• Robots Exclusion
• xFolk

Design Patterns

Design patterns give microformat authors a vocabulary for expressing their ideas consistently with what has already been done. If you're tempted to try your hand at writing a microformat read this first!

• abbr-design-pattern
• class-design-pattern
• datetime-design-pattern
• class names defined across all microformats
• include-pattern new!
• rel-design-pattern

Exploratory discussions

Research and analysis of real-world examples, existing formats, and brainstorming to motivate the microformat.

• attention
• blog-description-examples
• blog-info-examples
• blog-post-examples, blog-post-formats, blog-post-brainstorming (yields hAtom)
• book-examples, book-formats, book-brainstorming
• chat-examples, chat-formats
• citation microformat overview, citation-examples, citation-formats, citation-brainstorming
• comment-problem, comment-examples, (need to extract from comments-formats)
• directions-examples new!
• directory-inclusion-examples, directory-inclusion-formats. (see also rel-directory)
• distributed-conversation, distributed-conversation-brainstorming, distributed-conversation-examples, distributed-conversation-formats
• forms-examples
• genealogy-formats
• hash-examples
• last-modified-examples, last-modified-formats, last-modified-brainstorming
• hlisting-proposal, hlisting-feedback new!
  • listing-examples, listing-formats, listing-brainstorming
• location-formats. (see also adr and geo)
• media-info-examples
• meeting-minutes-examples, meeting-minutes-formats, meeting-minutes-brainstorming
• mfo-examples
• music-examples
• photo-note-examples
• recipe-examples
• rel-product-brainstorming
• requirements-testing, requirements-testing-examples
• rest-examples
• resume-brainstorming, resume-formats
• review-examples, review-formats (yielded the hReview draft)
• search-results-example
• show-brainstorming
• showroll-brainstorming
• table-examples
• tagspeak-examples
• transit-table-examples
• uid
• widget-examples, widget-brainstorming
• wiki-formats
• work-of-art new!
• xmdp-brainstorming (see also xmdp-faq)

Examples

• examples
• zen-garden

Tools & Test Cases & Additional Research

The first place to look for examples, code, and test cases is in the pages for each individual microformat. There are only a few cross-cutting tools and services that need to process more than one microformat. This section is intended for editors, parsers, validators, test cases, and other information relevant across multiple microformats.

• parsing-microformats
• selected-test-cases-from-the-web
• Source code repository
• vcard-implementations, vcard-errata
• icalendar-implementations
• faqs-for-rdf
• why-are-content-standards-hard

shared work areas

• buttons new!
• demo - a page with links for quickly demonstrating microformats working in practice.
• events new!
• to-do
• marked-for-deletion

microformats wiki in other languages

You may read and edit microformats articles in many other languages:

• languages with over 2 articles
  • Français (French)
  • 日本語 (Japanese)
  • Español (Spanish)

microformats translations elsewhere

These are offsite pages/sites with translations about microformats. If you are working on one of these, please consider translating the main microformats website!

• Deutsch (German) mikroformate.pbwiki.com new!

Start a microformats wiki in another language

Don't see the language you want? Help translate the microformats wiki into another language!

We're still figuring this out.

For now, see the Wikipedia page on Multilingual coordination, and How to start a new Wikipedia for some good general tips, advice, and community conventions.

You may want to start with the list of stable-pages, which are pages that are relatively stable, and have only minimal/editorial changes, which makes them much easier to keep in sync with the English versions, by using the my watchlist feature (use it to watch the pages you've translated for changes).

Page naming: for the translated version of a page, use the same name for the page, and simply add the RFC 3066 language identifier code as a dash suffix. E.g. for the French version, Main_Page becomes Main_Page-fr, and how-to-play becomes how-to-play-fr.

more languages folks want to see

• Chinese: 微格式 (Microformats) (see source of translation)