Microformats and Yahoo! Tech

You’ve probably heard of Microformats by now. It’s that vague concept floated amongst the standardistas which promises to solve world hunger and bring peace to the Middle East. You’ve always got something more immediate to do and hope to read about it soon. Heck, you don’t even know how it is actually used as an end product. Isn’t it just more code in the page?

All of these questions and issues kept me from trying out microformats until Tantek Çelik  gave a lecture at Yahoo! this year.  While the usefulness of the concept was still vague, the ease of implementation inspired us to give it a try.

Microformats let you define information in your page with a set of recognized classes. A parser (program or web site that transforms your information into useful tools) looks for containers with those classes and collects the information within them.  The user is then able to add people, events, recipes, web sites, etc to their organizers, databases, etc. Think of it as a way to multi-task your web pages.

Yahoo! Tech launched with basic support of the hReview microformat. We’ve continued to investigate how we can further support microformats and similar technology.

Introducing the Yahoo! Tech Bloggers with hCard microformat

The hCard microformat is based on a pre-existing standard (vCard).  There are many programs, web sites, and aggregators that are already prepared to use your information. You can add this to your site quite easily.

Let’s look at some code on a blog post by Robin Raskin (http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/raskin/621) This block begins with a list of content for the microformat parser, since it is not a part of the visual design, we are hiding it with CSS. The next section includes a set of links, her bio link has class=”url”.

Microformat classes and their functions

• div.vcard: This triggers the parser, letting it know the following information conforms to the hCard microformat
• li.fn: This is the formatted name of the person: Robin Raskin.
• li.title: Robin Raskin’s title – Yahoo! Tech Advisor
• li.org: The company Robin works for – Yahoo! Tech
• img.photo: This is a photograph of Robin
• a.url: This is a web site for Robin.
• a.url.email: If the Email Robin link were in the classic mailto:foo@foo.com format, we’d use these classes. Instead, the target is a contact form. To avoid confusion, we’ve left this link alone.

Testing your microformatting

Tails is a great Firefox extension for testing your code. It will display an icon in the browser if a page has microformatting. You can then click on it to open a window with all of the available information. This is a great debugging tool. Be sure to get the latest version for the best microformats support and extensibility.

An intertwining pattern library

Microformats are a rapidly growing technology. As patterns develop, they can be integrated into various other microformats and patterns. This requires going beneath the surface of the microformat twiki to harness its power.  While your results may not bring immediate benefits, the level of work can be minimal. This also requires having some faith in your code, as you may not be able to test the results.

The rel-tag microformat

Technorati has made the rel-tag an important addition to web sites. Simply add rel=”tag” to a link that refers to a page that is an index for information about the link text.  For instance, Robin Raskin’s page features a set of category related links. The rel-tag microformat lets Technorati and other parsers know where to will find the category index pages. 

The rel-directory pattern extends this concept. If Robin’s post was about digital cameras and she included a link to the digital camera index, we could add “directory” to the rel tag.  The final code would be:


Digital Cameras

The rel-home draft

Ther rel-home draft allows web developers to specifically define the link that takes the user to the home page of the site. Currently this can be done without microformatting; but lacks significant browser support. To use straight HTML, place this in the head of your page: <link rel=”home” href=”/index.html” />. Theoretically, the browser would detect this and give the user a hotkey to go back to the home page.

The rel-home microformat draft allows the developer to easily label the home page link. For instance, on Yahoo! Tech, the user can either click the large Tech logo or the products tab. Neither of these are the most intuitive, the rel-home could provide further assistance. Browsers don’t support this yet, but its simplicity makes it a natural to begin now.
The code is quite simple, add rel=”home” to your link:


Products

Should you begin using Microformats?

As you can see, the code is fairly simple. If your site is already presenting contact information, reviews, calendar events, or category indices, it’s time to look at adding a few Microformat details. The rel-tag, rel-home patterns are the easiest to apply. The hCard and hCalendar formats will give you the most usable information. Keep an eye on microformats.org for the latest developments and join their discussion list to play an active part in the evolution of patterns. Microformats may not bring peace to the Middle East, but they will give your web site’s content more power and functionality.

Resources

• hCard creator – This tool creates hCard code for you.
• hCard specification  – Microformat Twiki
• The rel-tag specification – Microformat Twiki
• The rel-directory draft – Microformat Twiki
• The rel-home draft – Microformat Twiki
• Tails Firefox extension – Instant access to microformat details