Comments on: Microformats are Web 2.0 virus

By: Programming is complex: HTML5 data-* » Blog Archive » I Think It’s Interesting

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:55:46 +0000

[…] have already blogged about microformats being a hack. And now I read about BBC removing microformats support due to problems with screen readers and […]

By: XHTML and microformats revisited » Blog Archive » I Think It’s Interesting

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 21:27:43 +0000

[…] my previous post on microformats, I have decided that my opinion in this matter needs more evidence. While I could […]

By: Andrey Shchekin

Andrey Shchekin — Thu, 31 May 2007 10:32:42 +0000

I have read some sources myself, and you are correct. HTML does not want to think of itself as XHTML unless served as application/xhtml. And HTML does not want unknown tags.

But, formally, if I set doctype to xhtml, I feel my right to push in any tags if they have correct (xmlns declared) namespaces. And browsers behave as if I am right.

The only problem with this is that IE requires xmlns on html tag, and that means that my content can not be embedded without an iframe (which is not a solution). I am still figuring out the solution for this problem.

By: Stephen Paul Weber

Stephen Paul Weber — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:19:39 +0000

Yes, they do, because they’re used to handling bad and invalid HTML from the old days. We’re supposed to be trying to move away from that, not make it worse by inventing new and on-purpose-wrong tags!

By: Andrey Shchekin

Andrey Shchekin — Tue, 22 May 2007 20:04:25 +0000

I understood that point, but did you have any problems viewing my blog? The highlighting in the previous post was done by a bunch of random XML tags styled with CSS.

All three browsers that I have at home (IE7, Firefox and Opera 9.20) handle them just fine.

By: Stephen Paul Weber

Stephen Paul Weber — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:47:22 +0000

Everyone would prefer an XML-based system, but we don’t HAVE that yet. Inserting random XML tags into an XHTML document is not only invalid, but it messes up EVERY browser out there.

Microformats achieve the same thing, do not break the way (X)HTML is supposed to work, use what is defined in (X)HTML for semantics, and are backward-compatible to quirksmode

Perhaps microformats are only a stepping-stone, but they are a good one