faq

Microformats wiki FAQ

This page document frequently asked questions about microformats. For frequently asked questions from the press, see press-faq.

wiki specific questions

Q: How do I create a username? Why won't it let me use my preferred username?

A: First, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username . Second, real names are preferred to pseudonyms/handles etc. Real names encourage better transparency and accountability. Third, the most common problem creating a user name is forgetting to caplitalize the first letter of the user name.

Basic Microformat Questions

Q: Are microformats dependent upon (X)HTML?

A: Microformats are made to be embeddable. They can be embedded in (X)HTML, RSS, Atom or anywhere (X)HTML is allowed.

Q: Microformats sound great. How can I help?

A: First of all, take a look at http://microformats.org/discuss to see some ways to join the conversations about microformats.

Q: I'd like to make a donation to the microformat cause. How can I do this?

A: Thank you for your willingness to support microformats. We've only recently started this site and have decided that while we are figuring out exactly how to accept donations, we will be passing along donations to other good causes. Please consider donating to another cause like Red Cross, perhaps directed to help victims of recent natural disasters.

Q: Which microformats have been implemented?

See the implementations page.

Q: Which microformats should I implement?

A: Chances are you that your website already has data very similar to several microformats. For example, you probably have people and/or their contact information somewhere. That information could be marked up with hcard. If you are publishing press releases, try using hatom.

Q: Do you have any link badges I can add to my website/blog?

A: Not yet, but we'll post them when we do...

Q. Are there any tools that support microformats?

A. Yes... implementations.

Q. What about using new URI schemes instead of class names, e.g. for geo information?

A. In general, it is more work, and less content-publisher friendly, to ask them to use URI schemes instead of class names.

Authors aren't publishing links to geo information.

They're publishing *visible text* of geo information.

So the easiest thing to do, for the author, is to leave it as visible text.

Thus, it makes the most sense to do the simple thing of just wrapping that visible text with a little bit of markup, rather than asking the author to move (or copy) it into an attribute, which may or may not require a reformatting of the data as well.

It would make sense from a usability persepective to hyperlink geo information to a maps page or something, so that clicking it actually does something. If you forced them to use a hypothetical "geo:" protocol instead, then that would interfere, since you can only hyperlink something to one destination.

Class interactions

Q. Are there issues with page styling when specific class values are used?

A. There might be. However, any such issues can be easily (trivially) worked around by using contextual selectors.

Q. How does the use of class values for semantics interact with the use of class values for attaching CSS styles?

A. The class attribute takes a space separated set of class names HTML4 reference. Thus both author and microformat defined class names may be used in the same class attribute. In addition, microformat class names provide the author with a consistent set of class names to use for styling. If the author is already using using specific class names, they can continue to do so, and include microformat class names. If the author is already using a class name that happens to also be a microformat class name, then the author may want to consider using contextual CSS class selectors to make sure that avoid any unintentional styling effects.

See also:

• A Touch Of Class
• Class For Meaning Not For Show
• Competant Classing, by Eric Meyer for discussion of choosing class names in (X)HTML
• Class attributes are about more than styling - Ryan King dispells common misconceptions about the HTML class attribute.

<div> and <span> semantics

Q. Is it semantically meaningless to use divs?

A. Yes, both <div> and <span> have nearly no semantics. <div> can be used to represent a "division" of the page content. Similarly <span> can be used to reperesent that that "span" of text has some meaning, but the specifics of what that meaning is undefined by the <span>.

Q. Does the use of <div> and <span> elements add any semantics to web pages?

A. According to the spec, <div> and <span> "offer a generic mechanism for adding structure to documents." Their only meaning is in dividing documents into sections, and as such, their presence implies that the content within has a specific, but undefined by the element markup, semantic. Thus they are nearly semantic-free.

Q. Why do the examples on the wiki use <span> and <div> for nearly everything?

A. <span> and <div> are generic elements in HTML. When you use microformats, you should pick the most specific semantic element available.

Class semantics

Q. Do (X)HTML class names have semantics?

A. The HTML4 specification does not define any particular class values REF, nor does it define any particular semantic for class values REF, except that they "may be used for general user agent processing" REF. However, the " draft of "Hypertext Links in HTML", allows for a "profile" to define meanings for those classes. XMDP is a format for defining meta data profiles for (X)HTML, and thus an XMDP profile can be used to define the meanings of class names.

See also:

• A Touch Of Class
• Hypertext Links in HTML

Indicating a page contains microformat markup

Q. Is there a way to indicate that a given web page contains markup that conforms to one or more microformats?

A. The HTML HEAD element's 'profile' attribute alerts applications to the potential presence of microformats. The W3C HTML Specification describes more about the profile attribute, and the XMDP description documents how it is used.

Microformats and Spam

Q. Given that Google now looks at hidden content as potential spam, will microformats be considered spam?

A. Microformats aren't meant to disguise semantics -- only provide a mechanism for marking up the content you intend to make visible on a page, typically no more and no less. Where we embed semantic equivalents in the tags themselves (i.e. GMT times in abbr tags for times), it doesn't seem logical that such data could be considered spam.