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, locationX X XContent, 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 MarkupIt’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 MICROformat.

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 Geolocationhttp://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/#BarCampsMeetup.com - http://www.meetup.com/Classic Car Events - http://autopendium.com/eventsSouthern 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 Kickoffhttp://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 – Plain Old Semantic HTML

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.

Blogging platforms and social media are using XFN

(X)HTML Friends Network - a set of relationship defining links to other people’s web pages

Relationship Friend | Acquaintance | Contact

Physical Met

Professional Co-worker | Colleague

Geographical Co-resident | Neighbor

Family Child | Parent | Sibling | Spouse | Kin

Romantic Muse | Crush | Date | Sweetheart

Identity Me

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.

hListinglisting 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

miz.thang@mizthang.com

What is the basic structure and meaning:

POSHifyYou work from the content, out, add valid and semantic markup:

<dl> <dt>Miss Thang</dt> <dd> <ul>  <li> <a href="http://www.mizthang.com"> Drama for Divas Unlimited </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"> Drama for Divas Unlimited </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"> mizthang@mizthang.com </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 – Plain Old Semantic HTML

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