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.

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)

Drafts

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!

Exploratory discussions

Focused on real-world examples to motivate the microformat.

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.

shared work areas