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Microformats Wiki

Welcome to the microformats wiki. There's a lot going on around here, but feel free to jump in and offer your assistance.

But First:

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

Please read process before proposing any new microformats.

Introduction

What are microformats? See the about page for an overview, and the introduction page for more info. Recent press and presentations are also a good place for some background reading as well. Frequently asked questions are answered in the faq.

One popular definition from our mailing list 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
• hReview
• rel-directory
• rel-enclosure
• rel-payment
• Robots Exclusion
• xFolk
• rel-home new!
• hAtom (new!)

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!

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

Exploratory discussions

Focused on real-world examples, existing formats, and brainstorming to motivate the microformat.

• attention
• blog-post-examples, blog-post-formats, blog-post-brainstorming (yields hAtom)
• blog-description-format
• chat-examples
• citation-brainstorming, Planning pages for a citation microformat
• comments-formats
• directory-inclusion-examples, directory-inclusion-formats. (see also rel-directory)
• forms-examples
• genealogy-formats
• last-modified-examples, last-modified-formats, last-modified-brainstorming
• listing-examples, listing-formats, listing-brainstorming
• location-formats. (see also adr and geo)
• mfo-examples
• media-metadata-examples
• other-formats
• requirements-testing, requirements-testing-examples
• resume-brainstorming, resume-formats
• rest-examples
• search-results-example
• table-examples
• tagspeak-examples
• transit-table-examples
• widget-examples, widget-brainstorming
• wiki-formats
• xmdp-brainstorming (see also xmdp-faq)
• show-brainstorming
• showroll-brainstorming

Examples

• examples
• zen-garden new!

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
• 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.
• to-do
• marked-for-deletion

microformats wiki in other languages

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

microformats wiki languages with over 2 articles

• Français (French)
• 日本語 (Japanese) 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: 微支付 (Microformats) (see source of translation)