Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0

Microformats burst onto the scene a couple of years ago and are fast becoming an essential tool for all professional web designers and developers. Imagine being able to integrate all of your web-based contact details, tagged articles, and geographical information seamlessly in web and desktop applications, without having to add anything extra to your websites except a little specialized HTML markup.

Microformats provide a more formalized technology for adding commonly used semantics (such as contact details, location, and reviews) to today's Web. Unlike XML or the semantic Web, microformats use ubiquitous technologies like HTML and XHTML, existing developer skills, and current web tools, and, perhaps most important, they work in all of today's web browsers.

This book is a comprehensive guide to microformats. It explores why―in Bill Gates' words―"We need microformats," how microformats work, and the kinds of problems microformats help solve. The book covers every current microformat, with complete details of the syntax, semantics, and uses of each, along with real-world examples and a comprehensive survey of the tools available for working with them. the book also features case studies detailing how major web content publishers such as yahoo put microformats to work in their web applications.

Written by one of the Web's best-known educators, John Allsopp, Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0 will help you painlessly get up to speed with this exciting technology.

Successful software developer, long standing web development speaker, writer evangelist and expert, John Allsopp has spent the last 15 years working with and developing for the web. As the head developer of the leading cross-platform CSS development tool Style Master, and developer and publisher of renowned training courses and learning resources on CSS and standards based development, John is widely recognized as a leader in these fields. As a presenter and educator, John speaks frequently at conferences around Australia and the world. His idiosyncratic blog Dog or Higher covers a broad range of subjects, particularly in technology and innovation, and is widely read and referenced. He is also a co-founder of the Web Directions conference series. John's true claim to fame, and source of some embarrassment is (semi-publicly) coining the term "Web 2.0" some months before O'Reilly. John apologizes unreservedly for helping to inflict this term on the world. When not bathed in the glow of various computer screens, John is a volunteer surf lifesaver at Sydney's famous Bondi Beach, where he lives with his wife and young daughter, who are the light of his life.