Microformats

Whether or not you should build your own social networking site and/or make use of sites like facebook is currently a hot topic within the not-for-profit web developer/consultant world. The launch of sites like Amnesty International’s “unsubscribed”, which bears many hallmarks of a social networking site, combined with growing attention for facebook campaigns and tools like SuperBadger bring the options and potential into clear focus. Elizabeth Dunn’s post last month " social networks, walled gardens, and decision trees" makes a compelling argument that non-profits should be focussing on these questions now even if they’re not key for their current audience: sooner or later they will be and you don’t want to be playing catchup. ...

An article I wrote has just been published over at InfoQ. It’s called Versatile RESTful APIs Beyond XML and shows how easy it can be to extend Rails’ RESTful behaviour to input and output resources not only as XML but also as JSON and Microformatted HTML. The article builds on some posts on this blog, such as Intercepting Microformats In Rails Input, but offers a bit more context. The timing of the article fits nicely with a post on the microformats-rest list about Rails, REST and microformats, so hopefully we’ll see more discussion of these concepts over the coming weeks. ...

In Input formats and content types in Rails 1.2 I mentioned a project I’ve been working on that will provide a RESTful service interface which accepts its input in a number of formats, including microformatted HTML. For certain types of data microformats provide a great way to receive input as they don’t require your clients to learn a new schema to send you data. They can take the same semantically rich HTML they’re displaying on their website and POST it to your endpoint. Or they can use a tool like Ryan King’s hcalendar creator to generate some sample input. ...

Yesterday we pushed the button and launched the new version of GOOD Magazine, a site I’ve been working on for the past couple of months along with the folks at Area17. It’s a relatively large Ruby on Rails system built on top of the ORGware system (refitted as an engine) and supported with a caching system built for Madame Figaro. Most of my work has been under the hood, but where I’ve touched the frontend I’ve tried to make use of microformats and other good practices. We’re providing a range of atom feeds (which will become easier to find over time as we make some refinements) but eventually I hope that we’ll have all listing pages using hAtom so that anything can be a feed. ...

I’ve been following the chatter over microformats ( XFN, xFolk, hCalendar, and their kin) for some time, but having been having a hard time formulating a response to all the discussion. In particular, the discussion over at Ryan’s blog and some postings such as this one by Danny Ayers have triggered further thinking. ...