placelessness and the advance of micropublishing

PlacelessnessAndtheAdvanceofMicropublishing

Alex FaaborgMozilla Corporation

mozilla Labs

The mockups shown in this presentation are not necessarily planned features for Firefox 3

These are topics we are spending a lot of time

thinking about / designing / prototyping /hacking / testing / rethinking /

iterating on

However

This presentation will answer 4 questions

1) What are microformats?

2) Why does Mozilla care about microformats?

3) What does a microformat-aware Web browser look like?

4) Why should Web sites expose their content using microformats?

1) What are microformats?

... and why are we talking about this in a session about Design and User Experience?

Technologies like microformats are fundamental to Human Computer Interaction

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

Information

Plain Text

Alex Faaborghttp://mozilla.comMozilla

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

HumanReadable

Not MachineReadable

vCardBEGIN:VCARDVERSION:3.0FN:Alex FaaborgURL:http://www.mozilla.comORG:MozillaEND:VCARD

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

Not HumanReadable

MachineReadable

CAPTCHA

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

HumanReadable

Not MachineReadable

Firefox Dialog

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

Not MachineReadable

Not HumanReadable

HTML

<div><a href="http://blog.mozila.com/faaborg/">Alex Faaborg</a><div>Mozilla</div></div>

Alex FaaborgMozilla

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

HumanReadable

Not MachineReadable (content)

Microformat - hCard

<div class="vcard"><a class="url fn" href="http://blog.mozila.com/faaborg/">Alex Faaborg</a><div class="org">Mozilla</div></div>

Alex FaaborgMozilla

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

HumanReadable

MachineReadable

... a way to create information that is both human and machine readable

What are microformats?

...they give humans and computers a common ground for discussing information

What are microformats?

Information like:

Contacts - hCardCalendar Events - hCalendarLocations - geo, adrTags - rel-tagSpam URLs - rel-nofollowRelationships - XFNReviews - hReviewResumes - hResumeFeeds - hAtomLicenses - rel-licenseVoting on Links - VoteLinksClassified Listings - hListing

↓ A whole lot more

Information like:

Contacts - hCardCalendar Events - hCalendarLocations - geo, adrTags - rel-tagSpam URLs - rel-nofollowRelationships - XFNReviews - hReviewResumes - hResumeFeeds - hAtomLicenses - rel-licenseVoting on Links - VoteLinksClassified Listings - hListing

↓ A whole lot more

Ways to learn more about microformats:

microformats.org

Ask a question, get a book

Tuesday, 1:30In 2003

Wednesday, 4:30In 2008

2) Why does Mozilla care about microformats?

The evolution of the Web browser...

Photo by Derbeth (Flickr)

1993 Web Browser as Book

C

Photo by Darius Capulet (Flickr)

2005 Web Browser as Radio

C

Photo by Neil Rickards (Flickr)

2008 Web Browser as Switchboard

C

Book Radio Switchboard

2005

Bookmarks Live Bookmarks Microformat Detection

Back and Next RSS Reader Integration Application Integration

1993

You find the information

You subscribe to the information

You move the information around

2008

Multiple types of information

Not hard wired: the user is in control of the associations

C Photo by Neil Rickards (Flickr)

At each stage the Web browser has been trying to keep up with the evolution of the Web

RSS

The same thing is happening now for other types of structured data

There are a lot of microformats, which ones should a web browser

natively support?

hCard geo, adr hCalendar

These three types of information are fundamental

People exist in space and time

exist in and

Space and Time also map to common representations of information

New Microformats

The Web

+

Further customization provided by the extension development community.The Web

please don’t hurt the webuse open standards

3) What does a microformat-aware Web browser look like?

Demo:

How can microformats help you get a beer, tonight

Created by Mike Kaply, IBM

Try it out: labs.mozilla.com

History

Bookmarks

Should Firefox display detected microformats in the content area?

Modal interfaces suck

Don’t change the content area!

Microformat creation?

4) Why should Web sites expose their content using microformats?

please don’t hurt the webuse open standards

1

2

3Photo by Orin Optiglot (Flickr)C

Questions...

faaborg@mozilla.comblogs.mozilla.com/faaborglabs.mozilla.comC

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This presentation was based on work by:

Tanktek ÇelikRay OzzieMichael KaplyChris MessinaWolfgang BartelmeJohn AllsoppMike BeltznerMike ShaverJohn LillyBasil HashemSean MartellSherman DickmanSeth Spitzer