Web 2.0 Glue: microformats (Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog)

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Web 2.0 Glue: microformats

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Information is often the most useful in bite-sized pieces. Storing information in convenient, tidy bundles sometimes called microcontent is still uncommon but this is changing quickly. Indeed, Web 2.0 trends will only increase the popularity of microformats that support discrete bits of lightly formatted information. This is one reason why Web 2.0 concepts strongly encourage small pieces, loosely joined: Monolithic specifications generally make for information that's trapped inert behind large, hard to consume, and brittle walls of formatting. Microformats seek to add just enough structure to make the information easy to create and use as well as eminently repurposable.

In fact, I just came across a GreaseMonkey script that purports to provide ten lines of code that can identify and process any microformat. If true, that just shows the promise of a new, low impedance Web where information really can be free, instead of bogged down in a seemingly endlessly collection of byzantine XML markup. GreaseMonkey's ability to add value to content in a Web 2.0 world, particularly by facilitating microformats, is still underappreciated however. Perhaps the forthcoming Web 2.0 browser, Flock, which is expected to have support for microformats as well, will help raise them into the mainstream.

So what microformats exist today? Quite few, and they really are tiny. Many of them are nothing more than an attribute added to an existing HTML tag. The quintessential microformat is XFN, the people relationships metadata profile. It specifies that you add information to a rel attribute in your anchor tags so that your relationships with those you link to on the Web can be provided. It helps increase sense of community on the Web and allows people to build tools that leverage this information, such as RubHub, an XFN relationships lookup engine.

Though XFN was the first, there are many other microformats. Here are some of the more common:

Overview of microformats

People and Organizations: hCard
Calendars and Events: hCalendar
Opinions, Ratings and Reviews: VoteLinks, hReview
Social Networks: XFN
Licenses:: relLicense
Tags, Keywords, Categories: relTag
Lists and Outlines: XOXO

What's special about these specs is that they represent a simpler, better way of providing information, usually in place within a larger document. This is ideal for many items which really don't require an entire dedictated XHTML or XML document.

And don't forget, beyond small pieces, loosely joined, Web 2.0 is also about the granular addressability of content and microformats are one key way this is achieved. As I wrote about a few posts back, Web 2.0 will be ushered in partly because its fundamentally lower intrinsic costs. That includes the overhead of providing and consuming useful information via its mark-up. Microformats will greatly contribute to making this aspect of Web 2.0 happen.

So, please consider yourself warned and start marking up your content. The more value you add, the more you will get back.

Technorati: web2.0, microformats

posted Monday, 3 October 2005
links: del.icio.us

Chris Messina made this comment,

Interesting. You might check out my post on this topic.

comment added :: 5th October 2005, 03:25 GMT-05 :: http://factoryjoe.com/blog

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