Microformats nishikant-taksande

Microformats

Nishikant P TaksandeSchool of Electronics and Computer Science

University of Southampton

AgendaIntroductionWhy MicroformatsConceptEvolutionTypesPractical ImplementationMicroformats On WebConclusionEvaluation

Introduction

“Designed for human first and machine second, microformats are a set of simple, open data format build upon existing and widely adopted standards.” -Microformats.org

Microformats add semantics to web pages using existing standards of HTML and XHTML

Microformats enable web application to extract, understand and process information in web page

Why Microformats ?

Separate file format for machine-readable information, however powerful, may not succeed simply because it uses another file [3]

Utilizing established standards to add semantics is the preferred way

Writers with some knowledge of HTML can add semantic information to web page like calendar events (hCalendar) and contact information (hCard).

Concept

HTML grew and become proper XML application, XHTML, including all the modularisation that an information architect could ask for [2]

XHTML class attribute add critical degree of freedom by occupying multiple class names in space separated list

Evolution

vCalendar

RDFCalendar

hCalendar

vCalendar

BEGIN: VCALENDERBEGIN: VEVENTSUMMARY: Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge: Inside the Mind of WatsonDTSTART: 20111201T170000ZLOCATION: Turner simsDTEND: 20111201T190000ZDESCRIPTION: How Watson works at a high level with examples from the show.END: VEVENTEND: VCALENDAR

RDFCalendar

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#'> <Vcalendar> <prodid>-//kanzaki.com//RDFCal 1.0//EN</prodid> <version>2.0</version> <method>PUBLISH</method> <component> <Vevent> <dtstart rdf:parseType='Resource'> <dateTime>2011-12-01T17:00:00</dateTime> <tzid>Asia/Tokyo</tzid> </dtstart> <dtend rdf:parseType='Resource'> <dateTime>2011-12-01T19:00:00</dateTime> <tzid>Asia/Tokyo</tzid> </dtend> <summary>Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge: Inside the Mind of Watson</summary> <description>How Watson works at a high level with examples from the show.</description> <dtstamp>20111130T104917Z</dtstamp> <uid>1322650157245@kanzaki.com</uid> </Vevent> </component> <component> <Vtimezone> <tzid>Asia/Tokyo</tzid> <standard rdf:parseType='Resource'> <dtstart rdf:parseType='Resource'> <dateTime>1970-01-01T00:00:00</dateTime> </dtstart> <tzoffsetfrom>+0900</tzoffsetfrom> <tzoffsetto>+0900</tzoffsetto> <tzname>JST</tzname> </standard> </Vtimezone> </component> </Vcalendar></rdf:RDF>

<a href=”/egFile.vcs”><b>Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge: Inside the Mind of Watson</b><p> How Watson works at a high level with examples from the show</p><small>December 1st, 2011, 5-7PM in the<i>Turner sims</i></small></a> hCalendar

<div class=”vcalendar vevent”><span class=”summary”> Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge: Inside the Mind of Watson </span><p class=”decription”> How Watson works at a high level with examples from the show.</p><abbr class=”dtstart” title=”20111201T170000Z”> December 1st, 2011, 5-</abbr> <abbr class=”dtend” title=”20111201T190000Z”>7PM</abbr> in the <span class=”location”>Turner sims</span></div>

TypesMicroformats

rel-licenseXFNrel-nofollowVoteLinks

Elemental Microformats

Compound Microformats

hCardhCalendarhReviewxFolk

Implementation

Microformats on the Web

Conclusions

Microformats are not new language

Microformats use HTML and XHTML power to create machine readable information in simpler way

Clever use of css class which serves the purpose of styling and providing semantic information at one place

Evaluation

Concept of microfomats has been very firmly stated and explained in the paper

Agenda of reduce, reuse and recycle is very well supported with the working examples

Overall it is successful attempt to introduce semantics into web pages with pre-existing standards which supports author’s view of microformats as lowercase semantic web

References

[1] K. Stolley, "Using Microformats: Gateway to the Semantic Web," IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, vol.52, no.3, pp.291-302, Sept. 2009. 

[2] R. Khare,   "Microformats: The next (small) thing on the semantic web?",  IEEE Internet Comput.,  vol. 10,  p.68 , 2006.

[3] R. Khare and T. C elik. Microformats: a pragmatic path to the semantic web (Poster). Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web, pages 865-866, 2006.

Thank You

Microformats