Geotagging

Posted in Microformats on 20 August 2008 | Comments

I have been geotagging a pub guide website using the geo microformat. I think location-based information will become more important in future and this is one way of adding geodata to your website.

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All about APIs, mashups, and microformats

Posted in Microformats Web development on 6 June 2007 | Comments

There's a great article on Digital Web Magazine called APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us by Gareth Rushgrove. The article explains what an API is and how websites uses these extensively nowadays. Mashups are described and the use of microformats as an API is explained [see also Can Your Website be Your API?].

I'm already looking forward to part 2 of APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us.

Technorati : api, mashups, microformats

Here's why microformats are useful

Posted in Microformats Web development on 20 May 2007 | Comments

Here's a cool use of microformats. Jeremy Keith has posted a video demo that shows how you can transfer microformatted event information from a webpage to a mobile phone with one click. The process uses a bluetooth version of the Tails plug-in for Firefox. Neat.

Technorati : firefox, microformats, tails

POSHify your website

Posted in Microformats Web standards on 23 April 2007 | Comments [2]

I came across the term POSH recently and discovered the POSH home page. This seems to be a 'subgroup' of the 'web standards movement' and is the basis from which microformats are built.

Initiatives like this are good because they encourage the use of higher standards and better semantics in the creation of websites. I certainly support it. However, I am of the general opinion that there will always be some poorly coded websites because of the everyman nature of the web. There will always be websites that are built by the 'common man' using simple website creator tools. These tend to produce poor code in some cases. The tools need to change I guess.

The first rule of POSH is that you must validate your POSH.

It is also difficult to POSHify your website when third party code uses tables and other poor code standards. The 'first rule of POSH' is that you must validate your POSH. Validating this page for example gives me a load of errors that are mostly generated by the Flickr badge. Some of the errors may be minor (and they do not cause page display problems) but they are errors, nonetheless. I am just not sure what the best solution is here. Contact the Flickr tech team?

I don't mean to be 'negative'. Just pragmatic. Just to repeat, I do support POSH and I intend to do what I can with my own code - and keep aware of the latest development in this area. I'd encourage all website authors to do the same.

Technorati : html, microformats, posh, semantic

Microformats explained

Posted in Microformats Web development on 5 April 2007 | Comments

Glenn Jones gave a lucid explanation of microformats and their usage at last night's Sussex Geek Dinner [photos]. In particular, it was interesting to hear that microformats would be a big part of Firefox 3 when it arrives [the browser as an 'interface between web and desktop'] - although the excellent Operator add-on does a great job already.

Bluetooth microformats! Now that's cool usage

Glenn also related a story from a recent London Barcamp where microformats were used to transfer contact information (hCard to vCard) from a bluetooth laptop to a bluetooth mobile phone with the click of a link. Bluetooth microformats! Now that's cool usage...

Another point that I found interesting was use of the address tag in combination with the rel="me" atrribute/value to point to the author's contact details. I think I might get busy and implement this myself.

One final comment, for microformats to really break-out into the mainstream, it will require content management systems, blogs and the like to automatically add this information. Sure, this might be based on 'easy' user input perhaps (a check box here and there) but it won't happen if the average user has to get down and dirty with the code....

As a freelancer 'locked away' in a home office, it's sometimes difficult for me to get much of an idea about the 'real world' and the Sussex Geek Dinners are one way of touching base with a few more people. Thanks to Simon for the excellent organisation as always.

Update: Glenn's presentation [1.4MB PDF]

Technorati : firefox, geek, geek dinner, microformats