Microformats - part 2(contd..)
The Cow PathsAn analogy used in the microformats.org website is illustrated; it says that microformats make an attempt to pave cow paths. It means that you can see these cow paths all the time everywhere and people in an attempt to avoid them walk on the grass or elsewhere carve there own paths thus showing way to the others that they had not seen before. So the idea is that instead of following the cow paths, we can easily readjust the alternate paths to follow the cow paths.
Description of a Profile with Microformats
If you imagine how many copies of your user profile will exist, then you will realize that all the sites will have one page with you id, name, nickname and personal information for contact. Microformats just put this information to a more useful category. You will not have to type all the information next time you register to a site; you will simply be able to import all the information available without copying or pasting the text. This can make possible the idea of an Internet wide profile and thus save you the typing of the numerous pages of data and contact information; also the up gradation of the data as and when it happens can also be effortlessly made with just a single click of your mouse either by you or your friends
Imagine the freedom and the luxury of simply importing your details!! hCard designed on the basis of the hugely popular vCard is designed just for this kind of a work. It might be a surprise for you, but your address book application has already put to use the vCard, as well as your mobile phone. hCard can be read with anything that reads a vCard with just a little extra help.
For example :-
<li>
<a href="http://suda.co.uk">Brian Suda</a>
</li>
Our first addition to the HTML to create an hCard is to wrap all the data in a class called "vcard":
<li class="vcard">
<a href="http://suda.co.uk">Brian Suda</a>
</li>
"vcard" acts as a reservoir for all the data that is inside the <li> element and this is the data to be taken into account for the vCard.
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