Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Microformats Primer (14 Nov 2005) By now you’ve probably heard of microformats and wondered what they are, exactly. Officially, they’re a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards that are designed for humans first and machines second. What does that mean to you? Fortunately, it’s simpler than it sounds. Microformats are about using the standards we all know and love to convey as much semantic meaning as possible. Think of them as semantic best practices. They use current XHTML tags such as address, cite, and blockquote and attributes such as rel, rev, and title to create semantically appropriate blocks of code. Microformats are great because they are both usable and elegant—and all you need to do to get started with them is familiarize yourself with the best ways to apply the tags and attributes you already use. Article URL: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/microformats_primer/ Read 337 more articles from Digital Web sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: The sound of silence          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy