introduction: Difference between revisions
Peter james (talk | contribs)  No edit summary  | 
				|||
| Line 5: | Line 5: | ||
More technically, they are items of semantic markup, using just standard "plain old semantic HTML" (i.e. "[[POSH]]") with a set of common [[class-names]] and "[[rel]]" values. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.  | More technically, they are items of semantic markup, using just standard "plain old semantic HTML" (i.e. "[[POSH]]") with a set of common [[class-names]] and "[[rel]]" values. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.  | ||
== Why Microformats ==  | == Why Microformats ==  | ||
| Line 26: | Line 25: | ||
It's easy to get started with microformats:  | It's easy to get started with microformats:  | ||
* [[get-started]] with adding microformats to your HTML  | * [[get-started]] with adding microformats to your HTML  | ||
==See also==  | ==See also==  | ||
Revision as of 00:26, 2 January 2012
<entry-title>Introduction to Microformats</entry-title>
What are Microformats?
Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched for, saved, cross-referenced or combined.
More technically, they are items of semantic markup, using just standard "plain old semantic HTML" (i.e. "POSH") with a set of common class-names and "rel" values. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.
Why Microformats
Why did we come up with microformats?
In short, microformats are the convergence of a number of trends:
- a logical next step in the evolution of web design and information architecture
 - a way for people and organizations to publish richer information themselves, without having to rely upon centralized services
 - an acknowledgement that (outside of specialist areas) "traditional" metadata efforts (e.g. meta tags) have either failed or taken so long to garner any adoption, that a new approach was necessary
 - a way to use well formed HTML for data.
 
The Appeal to Simplicity
- Microformats are a simple effort which has appealed to many frustrated with previous complex efforts.
 
One parallel that has been drawn is to REST in the API / web services world - for more on REST see suggested reading on REST.
Get Started
It's easy to get started with microformats:
- get-started with adding microformats to your HTML
 
See also
- A list of some notable users.
 - Recent press interviews and articles are also a good introduction.
 - See microformat presentations for more background and introductory material on microformats.
 - Listen to podcasts about microformats.
 - Read the FAQs for general microformat queries.
 - More suggested reading
 - So you want to implement microformats?
 - presentations
 - podcasts
 - testimonials
 
external
- Sitepoint has a nice introductory tutorial: Microformats - Plugging the Gaps in HTML
 - Premasagar has written up some nice microformats examples with source.
 
Translations
- introduction-pt-br (see also introduction-pt-br-2)
 - ...