Reviews

Gareth Rushgrove

morethanseven.net

A new title by Brian Suda, a co-author of the hCard format and writer of the popular Microformats Cheat Sheet, is reviewed by Gareth Rushgrove

Microformats are cool. Every time you get a few savvy web developers together and start talking about what’s interesting at the moment, someone will mention microformats and everyone else will either get overly excited or nod sagely. Using Microformats by Brian Suda is for the latter group of people. You might have visited the website a few times, probably marked up a couple of contact details for your last project using hCard and installed the Tails firefox extension, but you don’t quite have that zen feeling yet, you don’t know all the class names off the top of your head and you’re not constantly checking for new microformats or writing your own.

With just forty five pages, Using Microformats is part of the O’Reilly Short Cuts series of PDF books; you get a solid history of microformats, the background behind the idea, a run down of several microformats as well as example implementations and future ideas. The short format works really well here, anything more and it would need padding out and the price ($9.99 USD) is about right too. (The Short Cuts series could maybe do with a little more work with regards to the typography and layout, but this is a minor bugbear.)

The author, Brian Suda, does a good job of covering a lot in a short number of pages. As one of the authors of hCard and creator of several microformat-related tools, including X2V and the essential Microformats Cheat Sheet, you know you’re getting information from the front line.

The book covers Rel-License, Rel-Nofollow, VoteLink, XFN, Rel-Tag, Rel-Directory hCard, GEO, ADR, hCalendar, hReview, hResume, hAtom and xFolk, which is pretty good going! It also makes a good, sensible, division between elemental and compound microformats, as well as discussing some of the design patterns. Each section gives you a good idea of where to use it, as well as how to add the markup and relevant classes to your site. A section on styling microformated data also adds to the real world feel. This is all the information you need to know to get going.

My personal favorite bits were the ideas; things that could be just round the corner, especially if someone reading this wants a pet project. Microformats and Javascript libraries, microformat-enabled search, microformat aware applications (oh and hRecipe) are just a few of nuggets in the book. Throughout the book you get a good sense of why microformats are a good idea, and a sense of why so many people, obviously including the author, are so passionate about them.

The only real problem is the subject. Microformats are moving so quickly a book like this will go out of date in relatively short order. This would be a major problem for a printed book, but the low price and PDF format make this less of an issue here.

Using Microformats is a good evening’s read and a useful reference - although you’ll likely gravitate towards the Microformats Wiki and community over time. It can be a little technical and hard going in places, the typography doesn’t always help here, and it can come across like a series of high quality blog posts in places which, depending on your point of view, could be a good or bad thing. Overall, I learnt quite a bit, picked up a few ideas along the way and was busy reading it moments after paying my money. Recommended.

Book Name: Using Microformats
Publisher: O’Reilly
Author: Brian Suda
URL: www.oreilly.com/catalog/microformats/
Price: $9.99 USD
Rating out of 5: 3

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2 Responses to “‘Using Microformats’ by Brian Suda”

1. Mike Cherim says (on October 26th, 2006 at 1:28 pm )

   I just opened myself up to the world of microformats last night to learn more about them. I began with the hcard on Wikipedia. I found an hcard generator and inputted my data. What was output was appalling: a ton of divs and such. It then dawned on me that it’s the classes that count, not the mark-up. This was confirmed this morning on the WSG list. That was a relief. Thus, all-in-all, pretty useful technology.

   Mike

2. ryan king says (on November 6th, 2006 at 12:22 am )

   Mike-

   The hcard creator uses div’s and span’s and such because it has to be generic. When you use microformats in specific contexts, you can use the appropriate semantic and structural markup.