Microformats isn’t a new technology at all. It has been around for a while now. It is being adopted by many organizations. The future versions of the Firefox browser version 3 and version 8 of Internet Explorer are expected to include native support for microformats.
Why are microformats a good idea to represents semantics in web page?
Why are microformats a good idea to represents semantics in web page?
- It is a standard method to markup website content.
- It is not a new language. It is just a combination of XHTML and CSS.
- It is embedded in the web page. i.e. hidden from humans, readable by machines.
- It facilitate the interoperability between different applications like integrating the Outlook calendar with the events of a certain website.
It is designed on the 3R principle (reduce, recycle and reuse). First, Reduce: It uses the KISS principle (Keep it simple and straight forward). Second, Recycle: It encourages the modularity. Third, Reuse: It favors best practices.
How can I create a microformats?
The Microformats community has developed a number of creators for hCard, hCalendar, and hReview. It helps people to create their first microformats. You enter the required data and it creates the equivalent XHTML code. These provide a simple way to start publishing microformatted content. Here is a list of some microformats creator:
How can I create a microformats?
The Microformats community has developed a number of creators for hCard, hCalendar, and hReview. It helps people to create their first microformats. You enter the required data and it creates the equivalent XHTML code. These provide a simple way to start publishing microformatted content. Here is a list of some microformats creator:
- hCard Creator: http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator
- hCalendar Creator: http://microformats.org/code/hcalendar/creator
- hReview Creator: http://microformats.org/code/hreview/creator
People will think that it will take some time to be widely used on the web. Here is a tip for you the page you are reading right now uses microformats to markup contacts. 
Let us see some microformats in action, now you are asking me isn’t the semantics embedded in a webpage for machines to understand. So I think we need a special tools to extract this information. I will review 2 tools you can use to discover microformats in embedded web pages.
Operator
Operator lets you combine pieces of information on Web sites with applications in ways that are useful. For instance, Flickr + Google Maps, Upcoming + Google Calendar, Yahoo! Local + your address book, and many more possibilities and permutations. All of these scenarios are possible due to Microformats, an emerging standard for injecting semantics into HTML. The following screen shot shows Operator in action while opening http://11870.com/ which is a social network which implements hReview for user's reviews about places, services and business:
Tails Export
An extension for Showing and Exporting Microformats. Currently it supports the following formats ( hCard, hCalendar, hReview, xFolk and Rel-license). The following screen shot shows Tails export in action while opening http://11870.com/ :
Finally, Microformats is a good step towards semantic web. Now, your browser can understand some of the semantics in a web page like the contacts, addresses, reviews ... etc. For example, Microformats can help you integrate addresses with google maps and so on...
It is now clear that the dreams of Tim Burners Lee are going to be true "a single web of meaning about everything and for everyone".
Let us see some microformats in action, now you are asking me isn’t the semantics embedded in a webpage for machines to understand. So I think we need a special tools to extract this information. I will review 2 tools you can use to discover microformats in embedded web pages.Operator
Operator lets you combine pieces of information on Web sites with applications in ways that are useful. For instance, Flickr + Google Maps, Upcoming + Google Calendar, Yahoo! Local + your address book, and many more possibilities and permutations. All of these scenarios are possible due to Microformats, an emerging standard for injecting semantics into HTML. The following screen shot shows Operator in action while opening http://11870.com/ which is a social network which implements hReview for user's reviews about places, services and business:
Tails Export
An extension for Showing and Exporting Microformats. Currently it supports the following formats ( hCard, hCalendar, hReview, xFolk and Rel-license). The following screen shot shows Tails export in action while opening http://11870.com/ :
Finally, Microformats is a good step towards semantic web. Now, your browser can understand some of the semantics in a web page like the contacts, addresses, reviews ... etc. For example, Microformats can help you integrate addresses with google maps and so on...
It is now clear that the dreams of Tim Burners Lee are going to be true "a single web of meaning about everything and for everyone".
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