Microformats

"Microformats are simple conventions for embedding semantics in HTML to enable decentralized development."

Err... what?

Microformats are standardized markup conventions that encourage semantic documents and help users and machines alike publish, discover, find, share, and relate to information on the web.

Better, but...

Microformats boil down to simply using commonly agreed on structure and naming conventions when representing data on the web. Doing so helps authors keep their documents semantically correct and helps computers better parse and relate information.

That's more like it!

Not new by web time, the now almost three-year old microformat movement is seeing a surge in interest and adoption rates by companies and websites both big and small. Among it's supporters/adopters are Apple, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Last.fm, Livejournal, Twitter, Wordpress, and Yahoo. It's certainly not lacking for industry support ;)

Obviously, the way we use our browsers has changed drastically in the last few years. To quote Mark Pilgrim, "you just use your browser to browse? That's so 20th century." Gone are the days of nearly aimless searching hoping to stumble across some relevant page in the bowels of the internet. Today, everything is (or should be!) linked to as much relevant content as possible. It's like a big game of Six Degrees, but with less Kevin Bacon. To that end, all content that goes on the web should help facilitate this free-flow of information as much as possible. If you publish a calendar, your visitors should be able to import that calendar freely and easily into their calendaring applications. If you publish an address book, your clients should be able to quickly add those contacts to their email client. How can we do that?

Microformats!

By adhering to standardized naming and structure conventions, our data becomes more meaningful. Finding information becomes quicker, relating information becomes painless, the user experience is enhanced. As more support rolls in for microformats, the benefits to the user increase exponentially. Browsers like Konqueror already support some of the microformat instances, and will parse and present relevant information to the user.  And of course, the more support microformats get, the more unique applications we'll see pop up to make use of them.

Here at Congruent, we already use our own set of "microformats". We have set structures and classes for our forms and tables, naming conventions for our files, and common layouts for our sites. But that data is still trapped in our proprietary formats. Perhaps we should look at incorporating microformats into our work. I mean, we certainly have enough sites utilizing calendars to make implementing hCalendar worthwhile, and plenty of "People Listings" pages that could benefit from hCard. Outlines and tables of contents can make use of XOXO. Blog entries can benefit from hAtom. Though the standardized microformats available are still relatively few in number, their usefulness is certainly established...

Oh well, something to think about, I guess...