Rheal Poirier

In my previous post, divide and conquer I created the basic HTML page with all the necessary content for the CSSOff contest. In this post I’m going to discuss microformats. To figure out what microformats are it might be best to quote directly from the Microformats.org website.

Microformats are simple ways to add information to a web page using mostly the class attribute (although sometimes the id, title, rel or rev attributes too). The class names are semantically rich and describe the data they encapsulate.

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

Microformats are a bunch of class names that, when put in the right combination, let machines and people better understand  information like contact information, events, reviews and relationships. It’s much easier to identify, use, search,  and categorize the information on websites that have microformats. Almost every blog, discussion board and many online stores use microformats. Google uses them  in their search algorithms and for many of their applications, and not too long ago facebook added microformats to their site.

There are different types of information that microformats help to handle.  hCard allows the identification of address and contact information. hCalendar allows you to identify dates and times. hReview allows ratings, summaries, descriptions and just about anything related to reviewing any product or service. XFN allows people to define relationships and friendships to all your linked friends (think of facebook here).

For the purposes of the CSSOff contest, hCard will be used to mark up the addresses.

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