Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0
A surprisingly chunky yet friendly introduction to the world of microformats.
Posted 17 Jul 2007, evening.
Tagged with book, html, microformats, review, web 2.0, web design, web standards.
I was slightly suspicious when I first saw this book. I wasn’t sure how anyone could fill a book with useful and accessible information about microformats but I was relieved to find a well-written introduction to the technology with understandable instructions and real-world examples. In actual fact, the book could quite easily have been twice the size - luckily, those microformats still in the early stages of development and some of the more in-depth discussions on semantic markup and information sharing that tend to follow have been left for another occasion.
The first two chapters are dedicated to explaining what microformats are, why they are needed and how they are being used in the wild, using several live examples including Yahoo!, Cork’d and Technorati. The third chapter provides an introduction to/reminder of the principles of semantic HTML.
The book then goes on to introduce the major microformats including hCard, hCalendar, hReview and hAtom, together with the link-based standards such XFN, rel-tag, rel-licence, rel-nofollow and VoteLinks, before providing real-life examples in the form of case studies. The latter sections of the book deal with the microformat development process, design patterns and related tools, services and contacts.
The book is ideal for newbies (assuming they are already confident with POSH) but more experienced microformat users will undoubtedly find value in there too. Even if you don’t read it cover-to-cover, leave it on your desk and you will constantly find yourself dipping in and out for advice and examples.
Written by John Allsop and published by friends of ED, the book is available from Amazon priced £23.99.
