It's amazing what you can find bouncing
around the Internet. I stumbled across
microformats while looking for something else. Microformats are a way of
embedding semantic information on a
Web page. They're designed to augment
human-readable versions so software can
easily and accurately extract the same
information. Also, they're based on a
small set of open data formats built upon
existing and widely adopted standards.
Microformats are an implementation of
the REST (Representational State
Transfer) architectural style. REST is a
method for sending domain-specific data
over HTTP without using a messaging
layer like the XML-based SOAP (Simple
Object Access Protocol). Microformats are
one way to implement the REST style by
mixing metadata with HTML or XHTML.
A microformat like hCard defines a
standard set of attributes. In this case,
the information can be used to map data
from another standard, vCard. A Web
browser would display a sample hCard
XHTML representation () in a
human-readable form (). The XHTML
text is easy to parse using an XML parser
because XHTML is XML.
The big difference between the microformat version and a comparable XML
encoding is that the microformat can be
displayed without an XSLT transformation file (). With XML data files, the
machine gets preference. But with
microformats, the human-readable form
is augmented so software can extract
useful information.
Microformats will be quite beneficial to
developers who are creating Web interfaces to embedded devices. Most developers already have developed HTML or
XHTML presentations. Microformats
enable this approach to be augmented,
allowing more sophisticated interaction
with the system.
Web browsers can display microformat
information, but enhancing the browser
to recognize standard microformats like
hCard will let users extract structured
data, not just displayed text. Future
browsers like Firefox 3 and Internet
Explorer 8 will have microformat support.
Developers will be able to take advantage of the data encoded using microformats. This may be using embedded applications using tools like AJAX (see
"Working Within The Framework") or applications that access an
embedded device's Web services.
A great source is John Allsopp's book Microformats: Empowering Your Markup
for Web 2.0, published by Apress (see ED
Online 15617 for a full review).
Apress • www.apress.com
Microformats • microformats.org
REST • rest.blueoxen.net