Tantek (and others)
As I have too much time on my hands :-) Another draft response to
some /. comments
[SDC=Slashdot comment, MFR=Micrformats response]
SDC: Mixing presentation and data - good... bad... good. But it gets
better a little, each time (maybe more of a spiral than a wheel).
SDC: Ok, so this "microformats" thing is about encoding extra data
inside an HTML file by abusing CSS class names for markup, isn't that
completly unnecessary and nothing more than an ugly hack?
MFR: Several slashdot comments carry in essence the same criticism as
these - that microfomats, abuse the class attribute, and by doing so
mix presentation with document structure. This demonstrates a
misunderstanding of the class attribute of HTML. The class attribute
is very commonly used by web designers in conjunction with CSS to
style pages (which is one of the roles outlined for it in the HTML
specification [1]), and in truth, it is often overused in this way.
But despite that, class, according to the HTML specification "has
several roles in HTML", including "for general purpose processing by
user agents" [1].
Microformats make use of this second aspect of the class (and id)
attribute, and do so legitimately. It is not an abuse of the class or
id attribute to use it to add semantic context to a document. Nor is
the use of class in and of itself presentational - in fact, it is an
important mechanism for separating presentation from structured content.
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.5.2
john
John Allsopp
style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher
WebPatterns :: http://webpatterns.org
Web Directions Conference :: Sydney September 28-29 :: http://wd06.com
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