2006 / December 1st/ I just don’t get this whole Microformats thing
I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion, but I just don’t get this whole Microformats thing. No, seriously. I’ve tried and tried but I just don’t get it. And by don’t get it — I mean see the usefulness in using them, and teaching/preaching to others how to use them.
What are microformats?
From the microformats.org site:
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.
Basically, microformats are a set of common attribute values and HTML structure to more semantically display information on the web — like a contact card (hCard) or a maybe a movie review (hReview).
My main gripe: Ease of implementation
Maybe it’s just me — but I feel like the microformats crew are actively trying to make this an elitest club. I’m not very stupid (I don’t think) but when I first started researching microformats it took me ages to really understand it. It turned out to be dead simple.
You can see the documentation (featured to the right) is quite brief for simple formats like hCard. Wait a second… are you serious? This page is reeee-diculously (and needlessly) long and really needs to be cleaned up. It’s like a giant newbie-scaring-machine. hCard is dead simple to implement; a couple of paragraphs should suffice with two or three examples.
Even tools to supposedly speed up development are confusing. Below is Tantek’s hCard creator. Can you tell which form labels line up with which form fields? Given that this is the #3 result for “hCard” and linked two million ways to sunday, a couple of lines of CSS would go miles for hCard development.
Also — why can’t this tool be on the microformats site? Sigh Alas – at the state it’s in right now, microformats are a very individualistic cause. One person creates the microformat, and after that they own it. It seems that nothing can be said or done without the creator stepping in and weighing his or her opinion. If we want to get this thing going, it needs to be centralized and de-ownerized (if that makes sense). We’ll need the microformats.org site to be solid, tight, and easy to use.
We can’t afford to have this kind of complexity for such a simple cause. After all, ease of implementation is one of the biggest benefits people tout for using microformats — because it really is just using structured markup and classes to mark up your information.
And the documentation page is still going….
…
…
…
…
…
Are we there yet?
So do I think microformats are useful? I think some of them might be slightly useful in the future, but I don’t ever see them being an integral part of the web. In fact, I’m not sure that microformats will ever be useful to the “general public” — I have a feeling it’ll be a geek-only club forever. I think it’s a good idea… but just not quite useful enough right now.
What are your thoughts? Objections? I know microformats is a pretty opinionated subject, and few people share my viewpoint. So let’s hear yours.
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December 1st | #
I totally agree with you on this one – Kyle… However I believe the intentions behind microformats are good though…
December 1st | #
I have to agree. I’ve been using them for quite a while, but my initial reaction to them was ‘what?’. I’m a designer that been into the ’semantic web’ for some time – but the way Microformats are presented and documented confused me for ages.
Of course after a few very confusing attempts I finally understood – and like you, wondered why they couldn’t just have said it straight up. The whole Microformats website is so confusing and full of waffle.
And then, once you understand…what’s the point? I’ve still not seen any way to leverage the information Microformats encapsulate. Just what are we supposed to do with a Microformat once it’s there?! Where are the tools? The services?
I think Microformats are a great concept, but the current implementation and documentation leave an awful lot to be desired.
If we are having a hard time educating knowledgeable designers who are already familiar with modern coding practices, and getting those people excited – what chance do we have of Microformats filtering down into general acceptance and usefulness?
December 1st | #
Totally agree.
The cause (open standards for snippets of information) is noble, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to get your head around than it could/should be.
Matt’s point about leveraging the information is also valid – there are of course the bookmarklets, browser plugins and so on… but hardly any nerds I know have those things installed.
For the microformats thing to take off, I think it would need out-of-the-box integration with a next-gen browser. Unfortunately, considering the current messy state of the documentation, I can’t see this happening any time soon.
December 1st | #
Well… I agree with you about the documentation an introduction to newbies. But I really believe that microformats are VERY usefull.
Just an example:
Using hAtom (which is as you said a microfomat, this consist in a set of classes and ids) you have no need to create an alternative version of your content (AKA RSS or ATOM).
Maybe not right now, but in the near future this is going to be the “new RSS” IMHO.
(not so good speaking English, hope yo get my point!)
December 1st | #
Diego,
This might be true if an RSS feeds were hard to create. It’s almost getting to the point where it’s easier to have an RSS feed than to not.
Why should I clutter my Web page with syndication information when we already have standards for both.
RSS/ATOM are a great way to syndicate information to feed-readers. Why should we waste bandwdith on extraneous information when the rendering client isn’t going to show it anyway?
hAtom might become compatible with feedReaders but I can’t see such a solution coming to mass use.
December 1st | #
Unfortunately, looking at the Microformats site (currently) is like trying to learn web design by reading the HTML and CSS specifications.
A modest proposal in two words: Jeremy Keith.
As with DOMscripting, Jeremy is the guy who can explain microformats in a way that beginners (including me) can understand.
Jeremy’s blog posts, articles and presentations are the kind of introductory educational materials we all need to begin learning microformats.
December 1st | #
You should try the Tails Firefox extension. It parses microformats out of pages, and is able to display them in a little window in the corner of the screen. Then, you can install Tails scripts (just like Greasemonkey scripts), which have an effect on specific microformats. For example, you can install a script to add a person to your address book, which works on hCards. Or you can install the “Map with Google” script that maps hCards (for people), hCalendars (for events) and hReviews (for products) on Google maps. Likewise, there’s the “Add to GCal” script for hCalendars. And so on.
It’s worth trying out, I suppose this is what the Microformat people had in mind when designing them.
December 1st | #
I couldn’t agree more, Kyle.
For me at least, microformats have yet to make the leap from pretentious to practical.
December 1st | #
If you can recall correctly, just a few years ago many people had said the exact same thing about web standards. :)
I’m no nostradamus, but i personally believe microformat has a bright future, even more so with the explosion of social web and the emergence of semantic relationship between users and site content. I can give you several possible examples (in a very summarized way):
1.) hAtom: most web app/sites currently publish two sets of content, one for html web and another one for feed/api/bla bla. hatom pretty much merge the process into one.
2.) Assuming you already have flickr, myspace and linkedIn profiles and you want to sign up for another 4 more social websites. With hcard, it is possible to have a single sign-on for profiles and contacts.
And you get the idea where i will be going with hreview and so on….
There are still some potentials that have not been discovered yet. For example, we tightly integrated hcalendar into our university event publishing system (http://events.unl.edu). We haven’t figure out how exactly that will help us and our users yet but it is so easy to implement, and it’s an open standard and tantek is a cool guy, so why not. Ok, besides that, we decide to use microformat simply because we believe in its potential.
Don’t let the specs scare you. With a little more research and hands-on experiences, you will find that it is really not that hard/confusing to work with microformat. And if not for anything else, i hope you will positive views towards the common standard it offers.
December 1st | #
Alvin: I wasn’t implying that microformats were hard; I was implying that they make it seem hard. They’re in fact extremely simple. So simple that the complexity of the documentation is ludicrous in context.
Also, your statement about hCard is way off. That’ll never happen. Nor does hCard even come close to providing SSO functionality. It’s a whole new world.
But… again, you seem to have proved my own point with “We haven’t figure out how exactly that will help us” — that’s my entire point. I’ve been following microformats since Tantek was talking about them years ago. An yeah, Tantek is a cool dude… but is it enough of a reason to use them?
I honestly haven’t found it.
I use web standards because it helps me work faster produce more maintainable code and standardize my practices. I can’t say the same for microformats. The best I could say is: “I use microformats so that the extreme minority of my browsers, who have an extension installed, who are looking for specific metadata, who have scripts installed to interact with their other data management applications can more easily add me to their address book.”
Oh, and for those pushing hAtom… the last thing we need in this world is more syndication formats :)
December 1st | #
[...] I just don’t get this whole Microformats thing – Warpspire en se. (tags: microformats warspire blog opinion) [...]
December 3rd | #
Hi Kyle,
I agree on one point, at first Microformats didn’t make much sense to me either. However, more I understood their potential, the more practical they became.
To be able to use simple markup to create an hCard and allow users to add you to their contact list rather than uploading a vCard for them to download is a great thing. Yes, people at the moment have to install a third party add on like Tails or use a bookmarklet to extract the data, but in time browser integration will make this process a lot easier.
While Alvin was talking about the possibility of single sign on with hCard, I think a more immediate solution Microformats can provide has to do with the burgeoning number of social networking sites and the problem of adding lists of friends every time you create a new profile. A challenge to developers was eloquently stated by Jeremy Keith in his article on portable social networks. Using hCard and XFN to add your list of friends during sign up with a simple call to your web site.
Yes, right now it seems that the only people who use or care about Microformats are the designer / developer community. I believe that in time that will change as more and more people understand their usefulness.
December 4th | #
[...] Kyle Kneath recently wrote I just don’t get this whole Microformats thing and I wanted to take a minute to respond to him. [...]
December 4th | #
Kyle
Natasha here from the (WA SJO).
I had been introduced to the term earlier this year via a Social Media Club (http://www.socialmediaclub.org/) podcast on the future of the Online Press Release and how MicroFormats will enable better Press releases. I didn’t get it. And I especially didn’t get it when I went to the Microformats page you referenced.
But after reading, http://www.whymicroformats.com/articles/2006/10/04/introduction-to-microformats. , it finally made sense to me. I wish you had been in that office the day I had an “Oh, I get it moment!” about MicroFormats. Everyone looked at me because I said “oh!” out loud.
And Matt, re: “What chance do we have of Microformats filtering down into general acceptance and usefulness?” A great example of Microformats in use today are Technorati tags.
December 6th | #
I’m inclined to agree, the entry barrier to Microfomats is quite high just due to how it is put across. Now, there is nothing wrong with technical documentation, but I do think someone needs to take the time to do a dummies guide to help ease people in gently.
Totally agree on your comments about the hCard creator and other tools for creation of Microformats – they are lacking in simplicity and hard to find. This should hopefully change very soon though, when WebCards is released (its a plug-in, for Firefox (but IE and Safari versions are already in the works) which does a lot of cool stuff around Microformat detection, consumption and creation, first version should be released within a week).
As a side note, I’m also coding a pretty cool Flex app at the moment which does a bit of hand-holding when creating uF’s, mainly a ‘Learn AS3′ exercise for me, but hoping to release something over the next few weeks.
One of my biggest pet peeves with Microformats isn’t the community (granted, they are cliquey, but they work hard and most great ideas usually start off with a central clique) but the whole “Made for people first, and machine second” thing. I see where they were trying to go with that, but its a load of rubbish! Microformats exist, in my mind, as a way to semantically define common data types such as people, events, reviews etc. in such a way that they can be consumed. Now most of the time a person is not going to be the one doing the consuming, its going to be a bit of software, so really, all that microformats are doing is making data easy to parse – thats how we are using them within WebCards and its how most other applications interact with microformats.
December 6th | #
Cheers to you my friend. You have successfully articulated what I have been trying to articulate on the microformats list for the last while. Hopefully they are listening.
December 8th | #
The microformats thing is a great idea, however, I think we haven´t got any expressive real samples of microformats yet. Why should I use this if only developers would see how great my code-gorilla-skils are?
Tails extension? Ok, I´ve tried it for a while.. the only thing I got was some vCards. WHERE ARE the websites using it? What about desktop or web-based programs?
December 14th | #
I agree that currently Microformats don’t have a whole lot of use, but that’s because it’s a new standard that is slowing being adopted. Already we have firefox extensions, such as tails, that are being developed. Although Tails by itself isn’t practical, it show you the information that you can extract from microformatted data.
A more practical example would be this greasemonkey script. Essentially it will allow you to add an event (marked up with hEvent) to your google calendar with the click of a button.
The functionality is there, but it’s not being widely adopted yet. Once more people are aware of the possible practical uses for microformats, I believe we will start seeing more scripts/plugins to streamline our online tasks. Imagine the possibilities when it becomes an actual standard implemented in browsers.
December 17th | #
[...] Nearly two years on, and how has the Microformat agenda been improved? In short – it hasn’t. That same ‘explanation’ is sat there on the homepage. The Wiki still manages to wrap a very simple concept in so much technical jargon as to make it almost impenetrable for anyone not already familiar with Microformats to understand. I’m not the only one to be disappointed that this is still the state of affairs, and Warpspire’s recent Microformats article points out yet more problems. [...]
December 24th | #
hiya,
I think that the bar is very high for such a simple. It would be good if there could be a Lets Get Section, so i will propse that soon. maybe a dedicated website with Lets get going infomation on it would help.
It took me three hours to find what i had to do to make hCalender work with Outlook, all the time it was right infront of me, but without needing to test evry calender i can across i could not find any that worked with Oulook!
I think a simple guides website would be a good idea, prehaps when i know more about them i might make one!
Jammie & lion
January 24th | #
[...] that this post is becoming like the Microformats documentation, documented in Kyle Neath’s entry at Warpspire, so lets just get on with the [...]
April 8th | #
[...] Kyle Neath wrote “I just don’t get this whole Microformats thing”. [...]
February 29th | #
[...] post was actually inspired by Kyle Neath’s article “I just don’t get this whole Microformats thing”, where the author is expressing his own frustration about the Microformats movement being [...]