2008 Dec 12th 10:45am

Why Microformats?

Developer1: Now we've all separated style from content, wouldn't it be great if everyone used a standard structure and set of class names in their markup?
Developer2: Great idea! That will save me having to invent new ones. Let's also make those class names as semantically meaningful as possible.
Developer1: Good thinking! This will make our code instantly meaningful to other people.
Developer2: Absolutely, and all these standardised, semantic class names will also make our content more accessible to machines!
Developer1: What shall we call this set of standards?
Developer2: How about microformats?
Developer1: Perfect!
Developer2: What should we do when there's no existing microformat for the particular kind of element we are marking up?
Developer1: In such cases I think we should use Plain Old Semantic HTML.
Developer2: Ah, you mean just use a class name that's as semantically meaningful as possible?
Developer1: Exactly! Rather POSH don't you think?
Developer2: Ha! This is so cool! So many benefits with no extra effort!