last-modified-brainstorming
"Last-modified" Brainstorming
Purpose
To specify the date when the logical content of a page was last modfied in a visible form which is also machine-readable.
Authors
Possible class names
General class name considerations
- “last-modified”
- + “paveing the cowpaths” (“Last-Modified” used by HTTP 1.0 and 1.1)
- - HTTP’s “Last-Modified” Header has a slightly different meaning. (Last modification date of the resource, not the last modification date of the resource’s logical content)
- “last-updated”
- + New name for a “new” semantic.
- "updated"
- + atom syndication specification
Different class name for page specific and item specific dates?
For example “page-last-modified” is used to indicate the last modification date of a page and “last-modfied” for the last modfication date of a specific item*.
- Pro
- Easy parsing
- Contra
* This specific item is marked-up with a microformat, e.g: a microformat to describe blog posts may use “last-modified” to indicate when a blog post was last modified.
Possible date formats
Every date format which can be used with datetime-design-pattern can be used with “last-modified”
Theoretical example
This page was last modified 13:26 UTC, 15 Aug 2005.
could be written as
This page was last modified <abbr class="some-class-name" title="2005-08-15T13:26Z">13:26 UTC, 15 Aug 2005</abbr>.
Proposal (strawman)
Purpose
Many web pages are changed after they have been published. Some of them denote the date of the last update of theire logical way in a human readable way (e.g: „Last updated: October 17th, 2005“). The purpose of „last-updated“ microformat is to provide this data in a way which is also machine-readable.
Usage
The date is enclosed by <abbr class="last-updated" title="Date in machine-readable format">.
The machine-readable format is described at http://microformats.org/wiki/datetime-design-pattern.
Example
Last updated: <abbr class="last-updated" title="2005-10-17">October 17th, 2005</abbr>
Determining the date of the last update of a page
If one <abbr> element with the class value “last-updated” is present on a webpage the value of the title attribute is to be interpreted as the time the page was last updated.
If multiple <abbr> elements with the class value “last-updated” are present on a webpage the value of the title attribute which represents the most recent date is to be interpreted as the time the page was last updated.