page
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One particularly interesting use case that seems to keep popping up is that of understanding what a page represents.
This page is for collecting research, ideas, and brainstorms about using microformats to represent what a page is (or is about).
microformats do a good job of allowing authors to easily markup various semantics in pages such as people, events, reviews etc., however, there are only a few examples (XFN, rel-me, representative-hcard) of using microformats to designate what a whole page means or represents.
examples
Perhaps move this to page-examples once it grows a bit.
Examples on the web of pages which represent particular types of objects.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has pages that represent or are about numerous types of objects. Typically they use specific "infobox" templates to distinguish them.
- ... (links to specific Wikipedia pages that represent specific types of objects)
formats
Perhaps move this to page-formats once it grows a bit.
existing microformats usage
person
- XFN - use of XFN on a page implies that the page itself is or represents a person.
- rel-me - rel="me" hyperlinks in particular assert that the current page represents a person, and the destination of the hyperlink also represents the same person.
- There are numerous sites/profiles which support
- representative-hcard - representative hCard is a way to publish (and parse for) the fact that particular hCard represents the person that the page is or is about.
- many (most?) of the numerous sites supporting hCard profiles also support representative hCards.
Facebook Open Graph Protocol
Facebook's Open Graph Protocol introduces a meta-tag based format for expressing that a page is or is about a particular type of thing. The following types of objects are represented:
Activities
- activity
- sport
Businesses
- bar
- company
- cafe
- hotel
- restaurant
Groups
- cause
- sports_league
- sports_team
Organizations
- band
- government
- non_profit
- school
- university
People
- actor
- athlete
- author
- director
- musician
- politician
- public_figure
Places
- city
- country
- landmark
- state_province
Products and Entertainment
- album
- book
- drink
- food
- game
- product
- song
- movie
- tv_show
Websites
- blog
- website
- article
brainstorming
Perhaps move this to page-brainstorming once it grows a bit.
microformat root class on html or body
One simple technique that could work for all microformats is to put the root class name of the microformat on the <html> (permitted in HTML5), or if not, then the <body> element.
A page that represents an event:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html class="vevent">
...
</html>
A page that represents a review:
<body class="hreview">
...
</body>
This is a simple/easy rule to remember for publishers.
For processors/parsers, the rule is simple as well:
- check the
<html>for microformats root class names, if found, treat the page as that type (or types?) of object - else check the
<body>for microformats root class names, if found, treat the page as that type (or types?) of object - else perform any format-specific detection
root class on html or body discussion
- ... but a lot of publishing platforms (i.e. blog engines, CMSes) would make this pretty difficult in practice. TobyInk 08:06, 17 July 2010 (UTC)