CSS microformats

Microformats are protocols some people are working on in order to make HTML code more readable for machine. When we are browsing a website, human being can easily see which part is product information, which part is news detail, and we know where to find contact information. However this is an impossible task for a machine reader. That is why people start to build the microformats which throwing in many additional HTML tag attributes.

Generally, microformats consist of <span> and <div> elements and a class property, along with a brief and descriptive property name. For example, contact information, the standard way is to write it like

CSS microformats require using below format instead.

Whether microformats is useful or not is not depends on the protocols itself or its popularity, it depends how well machines implement it. Kooboo recommend not using many CSS microformats because it is not widely accept by machine tools, and this microformats adds extra complexity to HTML/CSS coding which is an extra burden for many users. The only useful format to remember seems like the “nofollow” attributes. In 2005, Google announced supports of “nofollow” attribute. Since then many websites have been using it for external links including the famous wikipedia. An example format looks like below.

Do not be surprised that rel="nofollow" is a microformats. The important is what it can bring for you but not what definition it belongs to. Below is another popular example of microformats.

In the future, when more machine robots announce more supports for microformats, we then should think about implementing them.