Notices tagged with microformats2

Tantek ()'s status on Tuesday, 03-Sep-2024 21:47:00 EDT

Tantek

Twenty years ago this past February, Kevin Marks and I introduced #microformats in a conference presentation.

Full post: https://tantek.com/2024/044/t1/twenty-years-microformats

Aside: This is an even shorter summary of that post from ~200 days ago, which #Mastodon readers never got due to a Mastodon #federation bug (details in https://tantek.com/t5Yo1).

Since early 2023, here are the top three updates & interesting developments in microformats:

1. Growing rel=me adoption for distributed verification (✅ in Mastodon etc.)
* Wikipedia, Threads, omg.lol
2. Proposal to merge #microformats2 h-review into h-entry, since in practice (e.g. on #indieweb) reviews are just entries with a bit more.
3. #metaformats adoptions, implementations, iteration

Tantek ()'s status on Tuesday, 03-Sep-2024 17:02:00 EDT

Tantek

Twenty years ago this past February, @KevinMarks.com (@KevinMarks@xoxo.zone) and I introduced #microformats in a conference presentation.

Full post: https://tantek.com/2024/044/t1/twenty-years-microformats

Aside: This is a summary of a longer post from ~200 days ago¹, which #Mastodon readers never got due to a Mastodon #federation bug (instances returned 202 for post inbox delivery, but did not show post to followers or on local profiles, details in https://tantek.com/t5Yo1).

I wrote a retrospective last year: https://tantek.com/2023/047/t1/nineteen-years-microformats

Since then, here are the top three updates & interesting developments in microformats:

1. Growing rel=me adoption for distributed verification (✅ in Mastodon etc.)
* Wikipedia, Threads, omg.lol support
2. A proposal to merge #microformats2 h-review into h-entry, since reviews are in practice (e.g. on the #indieweb) always entries with a bit more information.
3. #metaformats adoptions, implementations, and iteration

More details:
¹ https://tantek.com/2024/044/t1/twenty-years-microformats

Tantek ()'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 01:02:00 EDT

Tantek

Happy 12 years of https://indieweb.org/POSSE #POSSE and
19 years of https://microformats.org/ #microformats! (as of yesterday, the 20th)

A few highlights from the past year:

POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) has grown steadily as a common practice in the #IndieWeb community, personal sites, CMSs (like Withknown, which itself reached 10 years in May!), and services (like https://micro.blog) for over a decade.

In its 12th year, POSSE broke through to broader technology press and adoption beyond the community. For example:

* David Pierce’s (@pierce@mas.to) excellent article @TheVerge.com (@verge@mastodon.social): “The poster’s guide to the internet of the future” (https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon):
“Your post appears natively on all of those platforms, typically with some kind of link back to your blog. And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet.
Done right, POSSE is the best of all posting worlds.”

* David also recorded a 29 minute podcast on POSSE with some great interviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-posters-guide-to-the-new-internet/id430333725?i=1000632256014

* Cory Doctorow (@craphound.com @doctorow@mamot.fr) declared in his Pluralistic blog (@pluralisticmamot.fr) post: “Vice surrenders” (https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/):
“This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere [sic]), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control”

* And none other than Molly White (@mollywhite.net @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io) of @web3isgoinggreat.com (@web3isgreat@indieweb.social) built, deployed, and started actively using her own POSSE setup as described in her post titled “POSSE” (https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/202403091817) to:
"… write posts in the microblog and automatically crosspost them to Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky, while keeping the original post on my site."

Congrats Molly and well done!

In its 19th year, the microformats formal #microformats2 syntax and popular vocabularies h-card, h-entry, and h-feed, kept growing across IndieWeb (micro)blogging services and software like CMSs & SSGs both for publishing, and richer peer-to-peer social web interactions via #Webmention.

Beyond the IndieWeb, the rel=me microformat, AKA #relMe, continues to be adopted by services to support #distributed #verification, such as these in the past year:

* Meta Platforms #Threads user profile "Link" field¹
* #Letterboxd user profile website field²

For both POSSE and microformats, there is always more we can do to improve their techniques, technologies, and tools to help people own their content and identities online, while staying connected to friends across the web.

Got suggestions for this coming year? Join us in chat:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
* https://chat.indieweb.org/microformats
for discussions about POSSE and microformats, respectively.

Previously: https://tantek.com/2023/171/t1/anniversaries-microformats-posse

This is post 15 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/151/t1/minimum-interesting-service-worker
→ 🔮

Post glossary:

CMS
https://indieweb.org/CMS
h-card
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-card
h-entry
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-feed
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed
microformats2 syntax
https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2-parsing
rel-me
https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
SSG
https://indieweb.org/SSG
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention
Withknown
https://indieweb.org/Known

References:

¹ https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
² https://indieweb.org/rel-me#Letterboxd

Tantek ()'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 01:03:00 EST

Tantek

Twenty years and two days ago, @KevinMarks.com (@KevinMarks@xoxo.zone @KevinMarks) and I introduced #microformats in a conference presentation.

I wrote a long retrospective last year: https://tantek.com/2023/047/t1/nineteen-years-microformats

Since that post nearly a year ago, here are the top three updates & interesting developments in microformats:

1. Growing rel=me adoption for distributed verification (✅ in Mastodon etc.)
* Wikipedia: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me
* Threads: https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
* omg.lol profile links by default: https://home.omg.lol/info/profile-items

2. A proposal to merge h-review into h-entry, since reviews are in practice always entries with a bit more information:
* https://github.com/microformats/h-entry/issues/32

3. #metaformats adoptions, implementations, and iteration
* There was growing practical interest in metaformats, so I updated the spec accordingly
* A half dozen implementations shipped: https://indieweb.org/metaformats#IndieWeb_Examples
* Active discussion for evolving metaformats to support more real world use-cases: https://github.com/microformats/metaformats/issues

Hard to believe it’s been 20 years of iterating and evolving microformats, to #microformats2, growing adoption as #IndieWeb building blocks, distributed verification (those green checkmarks) in #Mastodon and across the #fediverse, and implementing metaformats parsing to standardize parsing various meta tags for link previews into equivalent microformats2.

From last year’s activity, it’s clear there’s more use-cases, implementer interest, and community activity than ever. Looking forward to seeing what we can build in 2024.

Post Glossary

h-entry
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-review
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
link-preview
https://indieweb.org/link-preview
metaformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
microformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/
microformats2
https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2
rel-me
https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me

Tantek ()'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 01:03:00 EST

Tantek

Twenty years and two days ago, @KevinMarks.com (@KevinMarks@xoxo.zone @KevinMarks) and I introduced #microformats in a conference presentation.

I wrote a long retrospective last year: https://tantek.com/2023/047/t1/nineteen-years-microformats

Since that update nearly a year ago, here are the top three interesting developments in microformats:

1. Growing rel=me adoption for distributed verification:
* Wikipedia: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me
* Threads: https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
* omg.lol profile links by default: https://home.omg.lol/info/profile-items

2. A proposal to merge h-review into h-entry, since reviews are in practice always entries with a bit more information:
* https://github.com/microformats/h-entry/issues/32

3. #metaformats adoptions, implementations, and iteration
* There was growing practical interest in metaformats, so I updated the spec accordingly
* A half dozen implementations shipped: https://indieweb.org/metaformats#IndieWeb_Examples
* Active discussion for evolving metaformats to support more real world use-cases: https://github.com/microformats/metaformats/issues

Hard to believe it’s been 20 years of iterating and evolving microformats, to #microformats2, growing adoption as #IndieWeb building blocks, distributed verification (those green checkmarks) in #Mastodon and across the #fediverse, and implementing metaformats parsing to standardize parsing various meta tags for link previews into equivalent microformats2.

From last year’s activity, it’s clear there’s more use-cases, implementer interest, and community activity than ever. Looking forward to seeing what we can build in 2024.

Post Glossary

h-entry
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-review
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
link-preview
https://indieweb.org/link-preview
metaformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
microformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/
microformats2
https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2
rel-me
https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me

Tantek ()'s status on Wednesday, 03-Jan-2024 19:09:00 EST

Tantek

31 days of #IndieWeb gifts: the _2023 IndieWeb Gift Calendar_ (https://indieweb.org/2023-12-indieweb-gift-calendar) wrapped up a full month of IndieWeb-related creations & updates from the community (and sometimes beyond) to everyone who wants to improve their #IndieWeb experience.

From plugins & libraries, to tools & services, to events & meetups, to web components & wiki pages, and blog posts & newsletters, there was something for everyone.

Some numbers:
🎁 67 total gifts
📄 32 new IndieWeb wiki pages
📜 7 posts on improving blogs, IndieWeb specs, and event summaries
💻 6 Homebrew Website Club online meetups
📫 5 This Week In The IndieWeb newsletters
🧱 4 library updates: new web components, #microformats2 parser update
🌉 3 Bridgy Fed updates & improvements
🧩 2 plugin updates: #Elgg IndieWeb & #WordPress #IndieAuth
🎪 1 #IndieWebCamp San Diego (2 days!)
📚 1 indiebookclub new year in review overview feature
📽 1 IndieWeb movie viewings aggregator
🧶 1 #Threads federating out #ActivityPub (followable by #BridgyFed)

Gift were shared by:
👥 20 individuals
🏢 1 company

I compiled these numbers by hand. Let me know if you see any errors. There are many more potential stats like:
* average (mean and median) number of gifts per contributor
* how many edits to the Gift Calendar wiki page
* how many different editors of the wiki page
* average (mean and median) number of edits per editor
I’ll leave those as exercises for others if they wish!

This is post 2 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/001/t1/restarting-100days-indieweb-gift-calendar
→ 🔮

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 11-Sep-2023 19:06:00 EDT

Tantek

going to the #SocialWeb CG meeting @W3C #w3cTPAC tomorrow (2023-09-12) at 09:30 CEST.

Looking forward to seeing @evanp.me (@evan@cosocial.ca @evanpro) and many others!

So many advances in #ActivityPub, #Webmention, Micropub, #IndieAuth etc. that it may be time to restart the #SocialWebWG to officially update all our active specifications.

We can & should also reach out to #Bluesky & #Nostr communities to work together on shared semantics and bridging protocols to continue growing a heterogenous #fediverse built on the #OpenWeb.

We know it is possible. We worked hard in the Social Web working group to align a lot of semantics across #ActivityStreams and #microformats2. The fruitful results of that are services like http://fed.brid.gy/ which I myself use to send a Webmention when I make a new post (like this one) and have #BridgyFed automatically federate it via ActivityPub using my personal site identity to #Mastodon followers and others.

@snarfed.org wrote up a recent comparison of top #decentralized #socialProtocols that can help inform a lot of this discussion: https://snarfed.org/2023-09-04_50856

Tantek ()'s status on Thursday, 16-Feb-2023 20:01:00 EST

Tantek

Nineteen years ago last Saturday, @KevinMarks.com & I introduced¹ #microformats @OReillyMedia ETech 2004, building on "semantic (x)html".

We’ve come a long way since, from methodologies to #microformats2, from publishing to peer-to-peer #IndieWeb use-cases.

We named #microformats only after we had established a pattern of real world examples; even our talk proposal was named RealWorldSemantics², and provided examples in that broader theme.

This exemplified important implicit values in ordering our efforts:
1. get real world things working first, not just theory
2. name them after a pattern emerges, not just solo efforts
3. grow the pattern with proposals, prototypes, iteration, evolution

The examples at that point in time:
* XFN — using rel-values for blogroll semantics, and the technology that defined rel=me in v1.1³, now the standard for decentralized social media verification on Mastodon⁴, GitHub⁵, elsewhere, and the basis of RelMeAuth⁶
* XMDP — XHTML MetaData Profiles, notably using an HTML class⁷ with a particular value 'profile' to indicate presence of a specific semantic structure
* XOXO — XHTML Outlines, formalizing existing usage of (X)HTML elements for outlines, also using an HTML class with a particular value 'xoxo' to express a semantic

Growing the pattern:
* rel=license — solved page licensing better than before, since widespread adopted
* VoteLinks — new rel values, prototyped, only one consuming implementation (since defunct)

And further brainstorming:
* recommendations — initial rel="recommendation" idea eventually evolved to hReview, and today’s h-review
* syndication — helped motivate HTML5 <time> element, eventually led to hAtom, and today’s h-entry
* playlists — led to various ideas, proposals, & demos⁸, still not really solved today

The mid-2000s were a time of eager experimentation, when we were learning that very small bits of markup (yes, hence the name) could be used to build some very useful capabilities on top of the open web platform.

A few observations with the benefit of years of experience since we proposed “microformats”:

One: Many microformats succeeded because we solved an existing problem, with existing *complex* solutions, by providing a drastically *simpler* solution.

XFN instead of FOAF. rel=license instead of Creative Commons RDF in HTML comments.

By doing so, we skipped the often harder problem of defining & refining a problem worth solving, a use-case, or user scenario.

Two: A few microformats succeeded because they solved existing problems, re-using *existing established* open solutions in other formats, reformatted into native HTML.

hCard from vCard. hCalendar from iCalendar.

This methodology leveraged years of prior hard open standards work by numerous others across numerous organizations, and deliberately avoided the bikeshedding trap of renaming things (or any other kind of non-trivial “clean-up”) while reformatting, thus making it easy for developers of one technology to see the 1:1 mapping and use the other.

The primary downside with this approach was formats that were larger than perhaps necessary for HTML-specific use-cases.

Eventually for microformats2 vocabularies, we adopted a subset approach, looking for web publishing use-cases for each feature, making h-card smaller than hCard, and h-event smaller than hCalendar.

Three: Success in a search engine was not enough, and sometimes attracted more bad actors than good. @KevinMarks.com, myself, and others at Technorati built search engine indexing and use of rel-tag and hReview, which helped evolve their specifications. A few other small search engines indexed rel=tag markup, however none remain today. hReview was adopted by Google which led to it being heavily spammed.

This pattern repeated itself with other microformats, and eventually we shifted from:
→ of course search is the first obvious use-case
→ search is one use-case among others
→ we need primary use-cases outside of search for longterm ecosystem success
Which leads to the fourth observation.

Four: Publishing alone is not a use-case. There must be multiple consuming code use-cases (beyond search) for a microformat to succeed longterm.

From individual features to whole microformats vocabularies, we learned that not only did there need to be sufficient content being published already, without microformats, that could benefit, but there needed to be good enough consuming code use-cases that benefited users (not just developers). The #IndieWeb community has been exceptionally helpful in both defining such use-cases and iterating on them with implementations.

We still get questions of the form: What’s the best way to mark this up?

I used to very much believe that if you could mark something up more semantically, you should spend the time & effort to do so. This drove a lot of early experiments with markup, and did provide some eventual benefits, most notably when semantic HTML elements provided good hooks for accessibility tools such as screen readers.

Now we know the answer to the question of “How should I mark-up this content?” must be accompanied by specific use-cases for consuming code of that markup.

If there is no consuming code use-case, it is not worth the time to add the mark-up (never mind the maintenance effort over time).

Sometimes one single consuming code use-case is sufficient to justify the time & effort to add more semantic mark-up. If that markup helps screenreaders, then it’s worth it. More often than not however, there must be multiple (again, beyond search) consuming code use-cases for it to be worth adding semantic markup, and certainly for developing new markup, whether microformats features or new microformats.

This focus on and repeated asking of questions like:
* What is the (consuming code) use-case?
* Or how does it benefit readers of this content?
has helped focus our modern microformats efforts on actual benefits to humans first, and machines second (if at all).

If you think of IndieWeb use-cases for existing or new microformats, come join us in the developers chat:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/dev

If you think of other use-cases or want to chat about modern microformats methodologies in general, join us in the microformats chat:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/microformats

This is day 32 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days

← Day 31: https://tantek.com/2023/044/t1/unified-sent-box-universal-outbox
→ 🔮

Post glossary:

h-card
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-card
h-entry
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-event
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-event
h-review
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
hAtom
https://microformats.org/wiki/hatom
hCalendar
https://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar
hCard
https://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
hReview
https://microformats.org/wiki/hreview
rel-license
https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-license
rel-tag
https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag
rel-values
https://microformats.org/wiki/existing-rel-values
XFN
https://gmpg.org/xfn/
XMDP
http://gmpg.org/xmdp/description
XOXO
https://microformats.org/wiki/xoxo

Previously, previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2019/044/t1/15-years-ago-introduced-microformats
* https://tantek.com/2014/042/t2/ten-years-ago-introduced-microformats-etech
* https://tantek.com/2011/042/t2/years-ago-presented-microformats-etech
* https://twitter.com/t/status/701095802

References:
¹ https://tantek.com/presentations/2004etech/realworldsemanticspres.html
² https://tantek.com/log/2004/02.html#d04t1311
³ https://gmpg.org/xfn/11#me
⁴ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification
⁵ https://hachyderm.io/@nova/109790530971147702
⁶ https://tantek.com/2023/032/t1/years-relmeauth-replace-openid
⁷ https://tantek.com/2012/353/b1/why-html-classes-css-class-selectors
⁸ http://microformats.org/wiki/events/2007-12-11-open-media-web

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 19-Dec-2022 04:01:00 EST

Tantek

upgraded my @BBEdit to v14. Thanks https://Barebones.com for a smooth & solid text editor for decades. Its HTML validator checks a/area/link rel for XFN values like rel=me (since 9.6.2).

Are there #microformats2 Clippings? Perhaps a holidays project, for h-card, h-entry, h-event, and other #indieweb building blocks.

Reference: https://www.bbeditextras.org/clipping-placeholder-reference/
How to: https://www.macworld.com/article/217200/how_to_create_and_use_bbedit_clippings.html

Tantek ()'s status on Saturday, 02-Apr-2022 02:59:00 EDT

Tantek

Introducing #metaformats (https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats), an extension to #microformats2 for parsing invisible data published in HTML meta tags, for backward compatibility with existing vocabularies consumed by multiple testable interoperable implementations.

Tantek ()'s status on Wednesday, 20-Jun-2018 22:00:00 EDT

Tantek

Happy 13th to@microformats.org!
With more use of #microformats2, especially among the growing #indiewebnetwork of websites, we’ve iterated key specs for real-world needs and are seeing more active community members. More updates & posts coming up!

MMN-o ✅⃠ (mmn)'s status on Thursday, 11-May-2017 01:30:05 EDT

MMN-o ✅⃠

in reply to

@waha06x36 @Gargron <a href="https://some.example/tags/microformats" rel="tag">verbose microformats category tag</a>

»Tags are embedded in HTTP URIs in a well-defined manner so that the tag embedded in an HTTP URI can be mechanically extracted from that URI. Specifically, the last segment of the path portion of the URI (after the final "/" character) contains the tag value.» - http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag

There you go. !ostatus doesn't require it, but HTML generated by !gnusocial aims to honour #microformats2 since it's great and makes us part of the !indieweb community.

Tantek ()'s status on Tuesday, 02-May-2017 17:45:15 EDT

Tantek