Posts in the Microformats category

• Microformats Made Simple

  20 April 2010 by Clive Walker

  Microformats Made Simple aims to teach you about microformats, what they are, the benefits of usage, and how they can be used in your website (X)HTML. The book starts with an introduction that includes a description of the history of microformats and their design patterns. Subsequently, each of the main microformats, and several draft microformats, are explained in their own chapters. Each section describes the advantages of using the microformat, its properties and syntax, the mark-up you might use, and how the microformat is applied to several (X)HTML examples. The book is clearly written in a conversational tone and it’s ideal if you are new to microfomats or even if you have dabbled with them (like me). After reading the book, I feel that I am much better equipped to identify and publish microformatted data in my websites.

• Microformats on my mind

  06 April 2010 by Clive Walker

  Coming up on this blog is a review of Microformats Made Simple by Emily Lewis. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the review but the book gives a really clear explanation of different microformats and why you should use them in your mark-up. Google and other search engines are starting to use them more and more (for example, Introducing Rich Snippets) so now might be the time to learn how they can be used and why they are a good thing.

  Despite the potential advantages, the widespread usage of microformats in blogs and websites will partly depend on tools that allow their easy inclusion. Writing in code view is all well and good but it’s not for everybody. Some systems (for example, Perch and Microformats) do provide methods for their inclusion but these need setting up beforehand. In database systems/websites, the same applies. The template or database is set-up so that multiple records have microfomatted patterns and class names added ‘behind the scenes’. Creating systems that do this automatically is probably the only way that Joe Public blog or website author will be able to edit/create microformatted articles and posts. If you know other examples, let me know…

• Geotagging

  20 August 2008 by Clive Walker

  I have been geotagging a pub guide website using the geo microformat. I think location-based information will become more important in future and this is one way of adding geodata to your website.

• All about APIs, mashups, and microformats

  06 June 2007 by Clive Walker

  There's a great article on Digital Web Magazine called APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us by Gareth Rushgrove. The article explains what an API is and how websites uses these extensively nowadays.

• Here's why microformats are useful

  20 May 2007 by Clive Walker

  Here's a cool use of microformats. Jeremy Keith has posted a video demo that shows how you can transfer microformatted event information from a webpage to a mobile phone with one click.

• POSHify your website

  23 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  I came across the term POSH recently and discovered the POSH home page. This seems to be a 'subgroup' of the 'web standards movement' and is the basis from which microformats are built.

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• Microformats explained

  05 April 2007 by Clive Walker

  Glenn Jones gave a lucid explanation of microformats and their usage at last night's Sussex Geek Dinner.

• hReview in Textpattern

  24 January 2007 by Clive Walker

  Jon Hicks has published a neat article describing one way of implementing the hreview microformat in Textpattern. Good idea.

• How to use microformats to export your contact details

  16 January 2007 by Clive Walker

  Shape Shed has written a nice article explaining how to use the hCard microformat and how to exploit the microformat data with a one-click 'add my details to your address book' link.

• Microformats everywhere

  20 October 2006 by Clive Walker

  Yesterday, I atttended the London WSG Meeting – Microformats. Here’s my quick review.

  2 Comments