Main Page

Microformats Wiki

Hello! Welcome to the microformats wiki. If this is your first visit, please see the introduction page.

Please read how-to-play before making any edits.

Please read process before proposing any new microformats.

Getting Started

What are microformats? What can you do with them?

The about page, latest news, plus recent press, presentations, podcasts, and screencasts are also good places for some background information. Our cheatsheets are handy if you need a quick reminder about a particular microformat.

Frequently asked questions about the wiki and microformats in general are answered in the FAQ, and there is a glossary.

Want to learn more in person? Check out microformats events.

Definition

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

Simply put: "Microformats are a codification of convention." -- Aaron Gustafson

"Or do you just use your browser to browse? That's so 20th century." -- Mark Pilgrim

How to contribute

Do you want to help take microformats to the next level? You can:

• Check out our open to do list for things to help get done.
• Join the mailing lists and IRC Channel to learn and help answer questions about microformats.
• Advocate the use of microformats.
• help to translate the microformats wiki into other languages to make microformats globally accessible.

Specifications

Microformats open standards specifications (see also: implementations)

• hCalendar - hcalendar creator
• hCard - hcard creator
• rel-license
• rel-nofollow
• rel-tag
• VoteLinks
• XFN (see also: xfn-implementations)
• XMDP
• XOXO

Drafts

• adr
• geo
• hAtom
• hResume
• hReview - hreview creator
• rel-directory
• rel-enclosure
• rel-home
• rel-payment
• Robots Exclusion
• xFolk

Design Patterns

Design patterns are common uses of markup across microformats.

• abbr-design-pattern
• class-design-pattern
• date-design-pattern
• datetime-design-pattern
• include-pattern
• value-class-pattern
• rel-design-pattern

Exploratory Discussions

Research and analysis of real-world examples, existing formats, and brainstorming to motivate the microformat. Please check rejected-formats before making additions.

• alternates alternates brainstorming, alternates examples
• attention
• blog description blog description examples
• blog info blog info examples
• blog post examples, blog post formats, and blog post brainstorming (yielded the hAtom draft)
• book book examples, book formats, and book brainstorming
• chat chat examples, chat formats, and chat brainstorming
• citation citation effort, citation examples, citation formats, citation brainstorming, and citation FAQ
• comment comment problem, comment examples, and comment formats (Some stuff needs to be extracted from comments-formats)
• collection description new!
• course-catalog; course-catalog-examples new!
• currency; currency-examples; currency-brainstorming; currency-proposal; currency-issues
• directions directions examples new!
• directory inclusion directory inclusion examples, directory inclusion formats. (see also rel-directory)
• distributed conversation distributed conversation overview, distributed conversation brainstorming, distributed conversation examples, and distributed conversation formats
• forms forms examples
• genealogy genealogy examples
• group group brainstorming and group examples
• items items brainstorming and [[items-examples|items examples]
• hash hash examples
• job listing job listing examples and job listing brainstorming
• last modified last modified examples, last modified formats, and last modified brainstorming
• hListing hListing proposal, and hListing feedback
  • Also, listing examples, formats, and brainstorming
• hProduct - hProduct brainstorming | hProduct discussion | hProduct examples
• location location formats. (see also adr and geo)
• luna (geo-like co-ordinates, for places on The Moon) - see also geo-extension-strawman a possible implementation updated!
• mars (geo-like co-ordinates, for places on the planet Mars) - see also geo-extension-strawman a possible implementation updated!
• measures and measurement units measure
• media-info (media-info examples, media-info formats, media-info brainstorming)
• meeting minutes meeting minutes examples, meeting minutes formats, and meeting minutes brainstorming
• metalink metalink examples new!
• microsummary microsummary brainstorming
• MFO examples
• music music examples
• photo note photo note examples
• question-answer, question-answer-brainstorming; question-answer-examples new!
• recipe recipe examples, recipe-brainstorming updated!
• rel-product rel-product brainstorming
• requirements testing requirements testing overview, and requirements testing examples
• REST examples
• resume resume brainstorming, and resume formats
• review review examples, and review formats (yielded the hReview draft)
• search results search results example
• show show brainstorming
• showroll brainstorming
• species - for the marking up of the scientific names of living things: species-examples; species-brainstorming updated!
• table examples
• tagspeak tagspeak examples
• tagcloud tagcloud examples, and tagcloud brainstorming.
• transit table transit table examples
• uid
• widget widget examples, and widget brainstorming
• wiki formats
• work of art work of art overview, work of art examples, work of art formats, and work of art brainstorming
• XMDP brainstorming (see also xmdp-faq)

Examples

• examples
• zen-garden

Tools, Test Cases and 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.

• accessibility
• faqs-for-rdf
• icalendar-implementations
• parsing-microformats
• selected-test-cases-from-the-web
• Source code repository -- HowTo: Download code from the repository
• vcard-implementations, vcard-errata, vcard-suggestions
• why-are-content-standards-hard

shared work areas

• buttons
• spread-microformats new!
• demo - a page with links for quickly demonstrating microformats working in practice.
• events
• to-do
• user-interface
• marked-for-deletion
• microformats-issues new! - issues related to more than one microformat.

microformats wiki in other languages

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

• languages with over 50 articles
  • Français (French) mis à jour!
• languages with over 10 articles
  • Português (Brazilian Portuguese) novo!
  • 日本語 (Japanese)
• languages with over 2 articles
  • Español (Spanish)
  • Deutsch (German)

microformats translations elsewhere

These are off-site pages/sites with translations about microformats. If you are working on one of these, please consider translating the main microformats website!

• Deutsch (German) mikroformate.pbwiki.com neu!

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 how-to-play-fr.

more languages folks want to see

• Chinese: 微格式 (Microformats) (see source of translation)
• Does somebody want to see a Dutch translation???