26
Apr
What are Microformats?
stored in: Microformats

A Microformat is a bit of syntactic HTML and CSS for the purpose of making data on your webpage readable by both humans and machines.

There are currently four popular and well-defined microformats:

  • hCalendar - a description of time based events
  • hCard - business card style information about a person
  • hReview - used to represent reviews of movies, books, and more
  • XFN - Xhtml Friend Network, representing social relationships thru hyperlinks

Here's a technical example of an hCalendar microformat:


<abbr class="vevent">
<a href="http://www.nuggetshoops.com" class="url">
http://www.nuggetshoops.com/</a>
<span class="summary">Denver Nuggets Playoff Game</span>:
<abbr class="dtstart" title="2007-04-28T018:00:00-07:00">
April 28 from 6:00pm MDT</abbr>-
<abbr class="dtend" title="2007-04-28T021:00:00-07:00">9:00pm MDT</abbr>,
at the <span class="location">Pepsi Center, Denver, CO</span></abbr>

Which produces this microformat:

http://www.nuggetshoops.com/
Denver Nuggets Playoff Game:
April 28 from 6:00pm MDT-
9:00pm MDT,
at the Pepsi Center, Denver, CO

4 Responses to “What are Microformats?”

  1. Amped about Web Standards » Tutorial: Using hCalendar Microformats Says:
    April 27th, 2007 at 12:11 AM

    [...] navigation About « Microformat cheat sheets for web developers What are Microformats? [...]

  2. Virtual Hosting Blog » Microformats University: 100+ Articles and Resources Says:
    March 25th, 2008 at 11:53 AM

    [...] What are Microformats?: Get a quick look at microformats in this introduction. [...]

  3. Andy Mabbett Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 4:19 AM

    For a discussion of accessibility problems with the (ab)use of ABBR shown above, see http://www.webstandards.org/2007/04/27/haccessibility/

  4. alan Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 11:53 PM

    Andy - thank you very much for that link. I’m going to rework the above example based on what I read tonight in that thread. I’ll also go thru my other code samples posted here to see if I they need to be updated based on the latest developing standards.

    Although I’m nowhere near the frontlines when it comes to fighting for web standards and accessibility, I try to keep the principles in mind when I develop web applications, and I don’t want people to inadvertantly read about an outdated approach if they come across my website.

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