Microformats 101 Workshop

Microformats Workshop 101
Improving SEO
Maintaining & improving competitive advantage
Future-proofing our sites
Long-term cost-savings
Preparing for the semantic web

In the beginning….

Location, location, location X X X Content, Content, Content
Words
Images
Sound
Music
Flash files
Videos
The Web is about content, content, content and that content is increasingly dynamic and interactive, with users being given more opportunities to control and manipulate that content. What we’ll learn to today is why the rallying cry “Content, content, content” is inseparable from another rallying cry “Standards, standards, standards.”

Sidebar on standards
Of railroad tracks and refrigerators….
Point: standards and lack of agreement on standards isn’t new or peculiar to IT.

Semantic Web
Information overload – for users, for search engines, for apps
"… most information on the Web is designed for human consumption, and … the structure of the data is not evident to a robot browsing the web. … the Semantic Web approach instead develops languages for expressing information in a machine processable form.“ -- Tim Berners-Lee
From the Semantic Web road map: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html
Web 3.0? The name is controversial, probably because people became disillusioned with the way Web 2.0’s meaning was diluted or outright undermined.

What is the semantic web?
The focus on standards-based Web design to improve our ability to make sense of all that content.
Using technologies and markup language to make it easier to find, organize, and repurpose information users find on the Web
Content, content, content requires standards, standards, standards
The semantic web is about making the content more meaningful.
Let’s revisit my old chest nut, the phrase, “A man with a bone.” what meaning(s) are conjured up by the phrase?

Man with a bone
Some people might say, “Oh, that’s just semantics.” By that they mean trivial. Bu this isn’t trivial at all when with think of the use cases. Consider:
WHO or who?
Manhattan (city) or Manhattan (drink) or Manhattan (Sunseeker model)?

How does it mean? With Semantic Markup It’s also called HTML or, more properly, (X)HTML (X)HTML gives structure and meaning to content Sometimes, developers might use the word “tags”
<img> image
<p> paragraph
<cite> citation
<h1> heading
<p> paragraph
<em> emphasize
<strong> strong emphasis
<ul> unordered list
<li> list item
<button> button
<address> address
<abbr> abbreviation (WHO/who?)
<dl> definition list
<dt> defines item in dl
<dd>describes item in dl
<blockquote> quotation

an interview transcript
classified advertisement
a product review
a book review
a product listing
a product price or price range
a name, an address, a business location
classified ad listing
a video or movie
contact information: phone #, hours, geo location
an event listing
In HTML 4 there are about 50 elements to describe what our content means. Maybe 50 sufficed in 1995, but it doesn't now, especially if we want to get much more granular to describe page content:

In order to create more granularity to the structure and meaning of pages, we could rewrite (X)HTML

1998: HTML4 published by W3C
W3C focus XHTML(2)
No-one maintains HTML
2004: WHATWG formed
Mission: improve and extend HTML
Work begins on what will become HTML5
2007: W3C HTML WG reactivated
Adopts and continues WHATWG work
( Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group )
will be years before HTML5 will be widely adopted
This week in HTML5 lampoons the HTML5 Working Group, http://lastweekinhtml5.blogspot.com/ -- funny and foul-mouthed
http://lastweekinhtml5.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-honor-of-our-leaders-glorious.html

The microformat movement emerged to extend existing (X)HTML.
(X)HTML was designed to be extensible.
Instead of an entire rewrite of (X)HTML, address specific problems (usually business and/or communication needs) and create a MICRO format.

Calendars & Business Cards

Microformats meet business/communication needs:
Probably the most widely implemented microformats that you may have encountered is the ability to add an event to your calendar (Apple’s iCal, Google’s Calendar, Outlook’s Calendar)
vCards in email or hCards on a Web page
According to Yahoo! SearchMonkey , there are 1,450,000,000 web pages that publish hCard and 36,200,000 pages marked up with hCalendar

Sites using hCalendar
Mapquest is implementing microformats such as hCard, hCalendar, and Geolocation http://blog.mapquest.com/2008/09/25/microformat-support-on-mapquest-local/ Yahoo! Upcoming Events Calendar - http:// upcoming.yahoo.com / Eventful - http://eventful.com/ Barcamps - http://barcamp.org/#BarCamps Meetup.com - http://www.meetup.com/ Classic Car Events - http://autopendium.com/events Southern West Virginia's Calendar of Events - http:// www.visitwv.com /events-calendar Wayne State University Events Calendar - http:// events.wayne.edu / PHP.net - http:// www.php.net /conferences/ Used in Firefox plugsin, Drupal, Dreamweaver plugins, Technorati

For sports fans….
World Cup Kickoff http:// www.worldcupkickoff.com / Lifehackers first promoted this tool, a story later picked up by Yahoo! News. Mon May 22, 4:00 PM ET The World Cup, one of the world's most watched sporting events, is almost upon us. If you've ever tried to follow your favorite team through the Cup you know that it can sometimes be difficult to know when they're on. World Cup Kickoff can help. World Cup KickOff is all you will ever need for knowing all the match details for the upcoming World Cup 2006. Whether you use your mobile phone, MS Outlook, Apple iCal or Mozilla Calendar, you can download and keep all the fixtures you are interested in so you will never miss a single game! Next tip? We'll show you how to get up at 2 AM to watch your matches.

hCalendar code example
<div class = " vevent "> <h5 class = " summary "> Refresh Hampton Roads Monthly Meeting</h5> <div>posted on <abbr class = " dtstamp " title=“20091101T1300Z">November 1, 2009 </abbr> </div> <div>Date: <abbr class = " dtstart " title=“20001103T180000Z">November 3, 2009, 18:00 EST</abbr> - <abbr class = " dtend " title = “20001103T190000Z">20:00 EST </abbr> </div> <div>This meeting is <strong class = "class">public</strong>.</div> <div>Filed under:</div> <ul> <li class=" category ">Business</li> <li class=" category ">Technology</li>
<li class=" category ">Design</li>
<li class=" category ">Usability</li>
<li class=" category ">Web Standards</li> </ul> </div>

Refresh Hampton Roads Monthly Meeting
posted on November 1, 2009 Date: November 3, 2009
18:00 - 20:00 EST This meeting is public.
Filed under:
Business
Technology
Design
Usability
Web Standards

hCard
Adds structure and meaning to contact information. Business card-like information is automatically extracted and imported into users’ address books. It can be made available to third party apps.
Technorati's Contacts Feeds Service
Operator Plug-in for Firefox
Tails Export Plug-in for Firefox
Oomph Microformats Toolkit

Microformats
are designed for humans first, machines second
are a simple, open data format
extend already existing, agreed upon standards
development starts with POSH – P lain O ld S emantic H TML
allow for publishing and sharing information in structured, meaningful ways
“ enable users to own, control, move and share their data on the web.“ -- according to Emily Lewis, a microformat evangelist who’s written Microformats Made Simple , mircoformats are meant:

Practical results:
By marking up content with microformats, the content can be described meaningfully: <div class = “ vevent ”> <abbr class = “ dtstamp ”> <abbr class = “ dtstart ”>
When extracted or retrieved by a machine, that machine can organize information in ways understandable and usable by people – because the markup’s more meaningful
Markup, new and improved with more meaning! In popular buzz, it is what’s behind the ‘semantc web’ which is sometimes called Web 3.0
Microformats transform a web site into a read only API

A read only API?
We publish a site once with (X)HTML enhanced by microformats
Using the hooks provided by microformats, the content can be converted into any other format that might be needed.
There’s no need to create and maintain separate data files for machine data or exchange (e.g., no need for separately maintained XML feeds, RSS feeds, Atom feeds, JSON, etc. Instead, if a third party wants to data or information, they just use an existing converter or write their own. It’s a standard – a lingua franca – that emerged like the original lingua franca from trade and exchange
Optimus - http://microformatique.com/optimus/

The Benefits
Enhances user experience
Improved SEO; better search results; may even be able to use microformat hooks to improve our search
Encouraging standards and consistency reduces development time
Simple format – no steep learning curve
No need for special technologies
Makes data accessible; enables sharing and re-use of structured data
Does not duplicate effort (RSS feeds duplicate existing (X)HTML displays)

Who Benefits (and how)
Managers : standards streamline dev process; SEO improvements
Designers : simple to learn; not daunting technology; styling is easy using existing CSS
Developers : less time deciding what to name thing or how to mark up content and more time writing the styles
Content authors : makes content more meaningful
Users : enhances UX; improves search; plugins and third party apps built to make organizing data easier

Get on the bandwagon

Already being used by:
Apple’s Webmail
Digg
Dreamweaver
Drupal
Eventful
Facebook
Firefox extensions
Flickr People; Flickr geo-tagged photos
Google’s search uses Rich Snippets
rel-nofollow is a microformat dev’d by google
Google Maps; Blogger;
Last.fm
LinkedIn
Livejournal and LJfind
Intel’s Mashmaker
Movable type blogging software
Oodle
Salesforce
Technorati Events, Contacts, Tagging
Twitter
Upcoming.org
Microsoft Windows Livewriter
Wordpress
Yahoo! Local
Yahoo UK Movies

In search
Google’s long adopted microformats in google local, maps. This year, Google started using microformats to display “Rich Snippets”
Custom Search:

What we’re already doing
The link rel=“nofollow” microformat

Widely implemented microformats we could use
Another relationship would be link rel = “tag” By adding rel = "tag" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink is an author-designated "tag" (or keyword/subject) for the current page.
Rel (relationship) tags make the content more meaningful and, therefore, make it easier to do content-specific searching. Already in use:
Technorati Tags http:// technorati.com /tag/
Operator Plug-in for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4106

rel = “prev” and rel = next” < previous > 2 < next >
Google rel = “canonical” to deal with the problem of duplicate content
Rel = “home” – to indicate which is the home page
Rel = “license” – to link to a copy of the license for a site, its content, etc.

hAtom and blogs
The hAtom schema consists of the following:
hfeed ( hfeed ). optional.
feed category . optional. keywords or phrases, using rel -tag .
hentry ( hentry ).
entry-title . required. text.
entry-content . optional (see field description). text. [*]
entry-summary . optional. text.
updated . required using datetime -design-pattern . [*]
published . optional using datetime -design-pattern .
author . required using hCard . [*]
bookmark (permalink). optional, using rel -bookmark .
tags. optional. keywords or phrases, using rel -tag .

hListing
listing action: sell | rent | trade | meet | announce | offer | wanted | event | service
Lister: using hCard microformat: (full name || email || url || telephone)
Dtlisted: date listed
Dtexpired: date expired
Price:
Item Info: optional uses: fn || url || photo || geo || adr | // Uses hCard microformat if it’s for person or business
Summary: summary of the item listed.
Description: description of item listed.
Item tags: keywords or phrases describing the item being offered, using rel -tag microformat.
Permalink: permanent link to the listing (is not intended to expire).

For Developers: First, you start with content
Miz Thang
Drama for Divas Unlimited
http://www.mizthang.com
Atlanta, GA 30301
[email_address]
What is the basic structure and meaning:

POSHify
You work from the content, out, add valid and semantic markup:
<dl>
<dt> Miss Thang </dt>
<dd>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.mizthang.com">
</a>
</li>
<li> Atlanta, GA 30301 </li>
<li>
<a href="mailto:mizthang@mizthang.com">
mizthang @mizthang.com
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>

vCardize
<dl class=“ vcard ”>
<dt class=“ fn ”>Miss Thang</dt>
<dd>
<ul>
<li>
<a class = “ url ” href="http://www.mizthang.com">
</a>
</li>
<li class=“ adr ”><span class=“ locality ”>Atlanta</span>, <abrr class=“ region ” title=“ Georgia ”>GA</abbr> <span class=“ postal-code ”>30301</span></li>
<li>
<a class=“ email ” href="mailto:mizthang@mizthang.com">
[email_address]
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>

The purpose – so content can be read and understood by people, but can also be retrieved and extracted by machines for the purposes of indexing, searching for, saving, cross-referencing that information for people. are designed for humans first, machines second are a simple, open data format extend already existing, agreed upon standards development starts with POSH – P lain O ld S emantic H TML allow for publishing and sharing information in structured, meaningful ways “ enable users to own, control, move and share their data on the web.“ -- according to Emily Lewis, a microformat evangelist who’s written Microformats Made Simple

Resources
The Microformats Wiki, www.microformats.org
Microformatique – microformat blog @ http://microformatique.com/
@microformats on Twitter -- http://twitter.com/microformats
@microformateers on Twitter – http://twitter.com/microformateers
Microformats Role Play –
http:// visitmix.com /Articles/Microformats-Role-Play
Getting Semantic with Microformats – http://ajaxian.com/archives/getting-semantic-with-microformats-series-by-emily-lewis
Update on Rich Snippets -- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/help-us-make-web-better-update-on-rich.html
Webpatterns -- naming conventions and patterns for the Web: http://www.webpatterns.org/
Semantic Class Names (several articles and resources) -- http:// microformats.org /wiki/semantic-class-names
Microformat Transformer -- http:// microformatique.com/optimus /
Web 3.0 -- http://webr3.org/blog/featured/preparing-yourself-for-web-3-0-lod-and-2010/
Microformat University -- http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/microformats-university-100-articles-and-resources/
Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0 - John Allsopp
Microformats Made Simple by Emily Lewis

Microformats 101 Workshop

by Kelley Walker

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Microformats 101 Workshop Presentation Transcript