microformats

microformats

What are microformats?

microformats are:

• a way of thinking about data
• design principles for formats
• adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns ("Pave the cow paths." - Adam Rifkin)
• highly correlated with semantic XHTML, AKA the real world semantics, AKA lowercase semantic web, AKA lossless XHTML
• described by Tantek's recent presentation at SXSW: The Elements of Meaningful XHTML
• a set of simple open data format standards that many (including Technorati) are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
• "An evolutionary revolution" - Ryan King
• all the above.

microformats are not:

• a new language
• infinitely extensible and open-ended
• an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
• a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
• a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
• defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
• any of the above

the microformats principles

• solve a specific problem
• start as simple as possible
  • solve simpler problems first
  • make evolutionary improvements
• design for humans first, machines second
  • be presentable and parsable
  • visible data is better than invisible metadata
  • adapt to current behaviors and usage patterns, e.g. (X)HTML, blogging
• reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards
  • semantic, meaningful (X)HTML. See SemanticXHTMLDesignPrinciples for more details.
  • existing microformats
  • well established schemas from interoperable RFCs
• modularity / embeddability
  • design to be reused and embedded inside existing formats and microformats
• enable and encourage decentralized development, content, services
  • explicitly encourage "spirit of the Web"