start-simple

Start Simple (Draft)

The principle of starting simple means to focus on solving a specific and immediate problem with your efforts. Very often, the simplest thing that could possibly work turns out to be an entirely effective solution, and no more work is needed.

The Microformats process emphasises the importance of following in the footsteps of previous efforts as much as possible, which enables more effective reuse of standards and semantics. Starting simple keeps the focus on what can be accomplished immediately, and making this work effectively, rather than spending additional time chasing conceptual or theoretical chimeras - possibilities that might have a general impact when implementing the standard, but then again might not.

Microformats should remain as simple as possible for as long as possible, collecting additional element semantics only when a significant practical need has been demonstrated for such additions.

Case Study - hAtom

• Removing Atom specific person/author constructs in favour of hCards
• Not dealing with feed level metadata - leave this to the web page context