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Many people are confused on what Microformats (including me to an extent) so I thought I’d do a quick overview, share some resources, and show you my examples.

So, what are Microformats? Well, to start you should check out the ‘official’ introduction to microformats here. You should also read the ‘Microformats Primer‘ by Garret Dimon from Digital Web. From Dimon’s primer:

“Microformats are about using the standards we all know and love to convey as much semantic meaning as possible. Think of them as semantic best practices. They use current XHTML tags such as address, cite, and blockquote and attributes such as rel, rev, and title to create semantically appropriate blocks of code.

Microformats are great because they are both usable and elegant—and all you need to do to get started with them is familiarize yourself with the best ways to apply the tags and attributes you already use.”

Digital Web Magazine - Microformats Primer

Okay, what’s this mean to the average web user? Well, nothing yet. As John Allsopp writes in ‘The Big Picture on Microformats’:

Few really dispute the potential of microformats, but all technologies, no matter their promise, live and die by their adoption. So, how are microformats faring a year or so after their coming-out party? Since microformats are markup, their impact is less obvious than, say, AJAX—whose dynamic visual effects are usually a bit of a giveaway.

Digital Web Magazine - The Big Picture on Microformats

Granted it is being adopted by some developers and web services but the average user most likely will not know a developer / web site is using Microformats. But, if you are using the Flock browser (which I have been currently, look for a review soon) you can view pages with Microformats embedded.

Click to open up microformats on the flock shelf (topbar).

This opens, and you can navigate all of the Microformat information on the page.

Want to know more? Well, here are some resources:

1. About Microformats
2. Microformats Primer
3. The Big Picture on Microformats
4. Introduction to Microformats
5. Microformats Wiki

Want an example?

Well, my resume and contact form have both been semantically upgraded with Microformats. If you want to see the semantic goodness, do a view source.

technorati tags:microformats, web2.0, semantic markup, web design, development

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