Main Page

Microformats Wiki

Please read How to Play before making any edits.

Please read The microformats process before proposing any new microformats.

Introduction

What are microformats? And what can you do with them? See the about page for an overview, and the Introduction to Microformats page for more info. Recent press, presentations, microformats podcasts, and screencasts are also a good place for some background reading/listening. Frequently asked questions are answered in the Microformats FAQ. Want something or want to contribute? Help with things To Do. Want to learn more in person? Check out microformats Microformats events.

One popular definition from our mailing list (see also: Mailing Lists) 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: Microformats Implementations)

• hCalendar
• hCard
• rel="license"
• rel="nofollow"
• rel="tag"
• VoteLinks
• XFN (see also: XFN Implementations)
• XMDP
• XOXO

Drafts

• adr
• Geo
• hAtom new!
• hResume new!
• hReview
• rel-directory
• rel="enclosure"
• rel="home" new!
• rel-payment
• Robots Exclusion
• xFolk

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!

• abbr design pattern
• class-design-pattern
• Datetime Design Pattern
• class names defined across all microformats
• include-pattern new!
• rel-design-pattern

Exploratory discussions

Research and analysis of real-world Best Practices for Examples Pages, existing formats, and brainstorming to motivate the microformat.

• attention
• blog-description-examples
• blog-info-examples
• blog-post-examples, Current Blog Formats, blog-post-brainstorming (yields hAtom)
• book-examples, book-formats, book-brainstorming
• chat examples, chat-formats
• citation microformat overview, Citation Examples, Citation Formats, Citation Brainstorming
• comment-problem, comment-examples, (need to extract from comments-formats)
• directions-examples new!
• directory-inclusion-examples, directory-inclusion-formats. (see also rel-directory)
• Distributed Conversation, distributed-conversation-brainstorming, distributed-conversation-examples, distributed-conversation-formats
• rest/forms-examples
• Genealogy Formats
• Hash examples
• last-modified-examples, last-modified-formats, last-modified-brainstorming
• hListing draft, hlisting-feedback new!
  • listing-examples, listing-formats, listing-brainstorming
• location-formats. (see also adr and Geo)
• media-info-examples
• meeting-minutes-examples, meeting-minutes-formats, meeting-minutes-brainstorming
• mfo-examples
• music-examples
• other formats
• photo-note-examples
• recipe-examples
• requirements-testing, requirements-testing-examples
• rest/examples
• resume-brainstorming, Resume Formats
• review-examples, review-formats (yielded the hReview draft)
• search-results-example
• show-formats
• showroll-brainstorming
• table-examples
• tagspeak-examples
• transit-table-examples
• uid
• widget-examples, widget-brainstorming
• wiki-formats
• Work of Art new!
• XMDP Brainstorming (see also xmdp-faq)

Examples

• Best Practices for Examples Pages
• zen-garden new!

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.

• parsing-microformats
• selected-test-cases-from-the-web
• Source code repository
• vcard-implementations, vCard errata
• icalendar-implementations
• Microformat FAQs relating to RDF
• why-are-content-standards-hard

shared work areas

• Microformats Buttons new!
• demo - a page with links for quickly demonstrating microformats working in practice.
• Microformats events new!
• To Do
• marked-for-deletion

microformats wiki in other languages

You may read and edit microformats articles in many different other languages

microformats wiki languages with over 2 articles

• Français (French)
• 日本語 (Japanese) new!
• Español (Spanish) new!

Start a microformats wiki in another language

Don't see the language you want? Help translate the microformats wiki into another language!

We're still figuring this out.

For now, see the Wikipedia page on Multilingual coordination, and How to start a new Wikipedia for some good general tips, advice, and community conventions.

You may want to start with the list of Stable pages, which are pages that are relatively stable, and have only minimal/editorial changes, which makes them much easier to keep in sync with the English versions, by using the my watchlist feature (use it to watch the pages you've translated for changes).

Page naming: for the translated version of a page, use the same name for the page, and simply add the RFC 3066 language identifier code as a dash suffix. E.g. for the French version, Main_Page becomes Main_Page-fr, and How to Play becomes Comment jouer.

more languages folks want to see

• Chinese: 微格式 (Microformats) (see source of translation)