Everything you wanted to know about microformats (but were afraid to ask)

Allright, you might never wanted to know or were afraid to ask, but microformats are here to change the way we provide and acquire information so I decided to write a few things about them.

What are microformats?

According to the official announcement…

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

It doesn’t make sense. Can you clarify it?

OK. Microformats are simple semantic code which can be used in a website in order to provide or acquire information about personal data (name, email, address etc), events, reviews etc.

Yes, but can’t I provide such information anyway? Why microformats are useful?

Of course you can. With microformats you let a visitor use the provided information. For example a visitor can store you details in his address book, or find you in a Google map or save the date of an event in his Google Calendar.

How can I use microformats in my webpage?

If you write code, semantically correct code, it is very easy. You just have to use specific classes for specific microformats. The xhtml tags remain untouched, unless you screw them.

If you don’t, you still can use one of the online microformats generators and then copy and paste the output in your page.

Can this information be shown the way I want?

Yeap. You just have to edit a bit your CSS file and add some style to the classes I mentioned above. It’s really easy.

So you think everything is so easy. Don’t you hide me something?

Not at all. The only thing you need is to spare some time to get used to the idea and to be able to respect Web semantics.

I need some examples.

First things first. You can download my vCard and save me among your contacts.

In order to see how far this thing goes you need to download one or two Firefox extensions. These extensions will inform you if a website provides microformats data and how you can use it.

Are you sure microformats are important?

I will tell you three words: Google, Technorati, Flickr. Do I need to say more?

Allright, I am convinced. Now I need some links to start doing things. Where should I go?

You can start from the official microformats page. Don’t forget to take a look at the excellent (and overwhelming) article of Smashing Magazine about microformats.