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Microformats Wiki

microformats.org

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Re: Microformats Wiki

#61

Post by lloydatkinson »

cxr wrote: post #58
lloydatkinson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The single-minded minded Web developers with a focus only on styling Again with the attacks. There is no evidence that eg Google uses arbitrary class names in order to index metadata over the accepted standards of microdata. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure... Given I know what microdata is, when to use it, and how it's different to CSS, I'm not sure what bubble this would be. Perhaps th…

Where do you see an attack there...? That quote is a completely anodyne, factual description. There is zero pejorative (or even emotional content in it, for that matter). > There is no evidence that eg Google uses arbitrary class names in order to[...] Again: who are you arguing with? Every response you've written here has the quality of being written as if addressing someone or something that doesn't even appear in…

You opened by saying that "folks" are using Tailwind CSS instead of your preferred arbitrary class names that would mean nothing to browsers. Tailwind is a styling tool. There is nothing stopping you from using additional random class names you believe might make a difference to search engines - there is also nothing encouraging you to do that either other than a footnote in the HTML spec.

I don't know why you don't remember you opened with that, but, after seeing attacks like "single minded", "bubbles", "professional ideological grounds", merely for telling you that in the real world people are not using CSS class names in the way you want them to be and are instead using microdata, I won't be engaging in this pointless debate further.

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...

Re: Microformats Wiki

#62

Post by cxr »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #61
cxr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you see an attack there...? That quote is a completely anodyne, factual description. There is zero pejorative (or even emotional content in it, for that matter). > There is no evidence that eg Google uses arbitrary class names in order to[...] Again: who are you arguing with? Every response you've written here has the quality of being written as if addressing someone or something that doesn't even appear in…

You opened by saying that "folks" are using Tailwind CSS instead of your preferred arbitrary class names that would mean nothing to browsers. Tailwind is a styling tool. There is nothing stopping you from using additional random class names you believe might make a difference to search engines - there is also nothing encouraging you to do that either other than a footnote in the HTML spec. I don't know why you don't…

> There is nothing stopping you from using additional random class names

Congratulations on arriving at the realization that matches exactly what I wrote out in my first message. That you can include both was my entire thesis, dude!

That you missed that and feel that "single-minded"[1] is an attack[2] explains the conflict here. You're reading things out of comments that aren't actually written there[3] and failing to read out of them what actually is.

I'm glad that this exchange is over.

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/single-minded>: Intensely focused and concentrated on purpose, thinking of only one goal, undistractable.

2. Are you perhaps mistaking it with "small-minded"?

3. That stuff, along with being able to "make a difference to search engines" mentioned, once again. Why? To reiterate—in response to what, exactly? Who are you arguing with?

Re: Microformats Wiki

#63

Post by tomjakubowski »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #55
souplesse wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you really suggesting that people should make Cascading Style Sheets do more than styling? The parent made no such suggestion. You seem to be conflating the purpose of HTML classes with CSS. Here's a note from the "literal entire spec"[0], which other commenters have already pointed out: > […] authors are encouraged to use values that describe the nature of the content, rather than values that describe the desi…

There is no evidence that eg Google uses arbitrary class names in order to index metadata over the accepted standards of microdata. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...

I'm not Google but when I write a scraper I frequently use class selectors to pick out data. It's a rare occasion when all the information I need from a page is tagged as microdata.

Re: Microformats Wiki

#64

Post by sleepyhead »

jamietanna wrote: post #35
sleepyhead wrote: post #5

Google prefers JSON-LD though[0]. Also I'm not keen on defining content with styling classes. [0] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-structured-data-p...

As mentioned in https://www.jvt.me/posts/2020/03/02/google-microformats-supp... Microformats are still a recommended route

Not recommended but supported. JSON+LD is recommended. See https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...

Re: Microformats Wiki

#65

Post by solardev »

cxr wrote: post #52
solardev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matters how? Microdata seems irrelevant to begin with, ignored by search engines or anything else (at least in my limited tests), and faking it with semi-semantic class names alongside auto generated ones will do what, exactly? Like, what is this additional data layer actually for? What humans or software use it?

> Matters how? I don't know. That's your word. You're the one who wrote it. I'm asking you. > faking it with semi-semantic class names Huh?

I mean why go through all this effort at all?

Re: Microformats Wiki

#66

Post by madrox »

willnorris wrote: post #17
madrox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific idea, way back then, was DiSo [1]. Believe it or not, privacy wasn't the concern back then. The real problem was UX. Setting up and maintaining this stuff was Hard, and the network effect mattered a lot more in getting adoption. Facebook was really good at onboarding flows. OpenID lost to Facebook Connect for similar reasons. 1: https://diso-project.org/

UX definitely ended up being one of the hardest parts. We also never got to the point of really building a compelling product on top of the protocols. We did actually do some work on privacy though, but it never got super far. For example, you could set simple access controls on content that was only available to friends that logged in with an OpenID. I think I had it so that certain of your hcard attributes were onl…

The man himself! Thanks for chiming in.

Re: Microformats Wiki

#67

Post by cxr »

solardev wrote: post #65
cxr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Matters how? I don't know. That's your word. You're the one who wrote it. I'm asking you. > faking it with semi-semantic class names Huh?

I mean why go through all this effort at all?

You're going to have to put more effort communicating that you've thought about what you're asking (including effort in laying out what you're even asking) if you expect any effort to be put into a response. Of your three comments here, two out of three are (ambiguous) one-liners, and three out of three come off like you took all of 10 seconds to bang them out before hitting the "reply" button.

Even if that happens, I'm past 50/50 on the question of "is this even worthy of further engagement?" at this point. (It's pretty much at a 100% "no".)

Re: Microformats Wiki

#68

Post by solardev »

cxr wrote: post #67
solardev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean why go through all this effort at all?

You're going to have to put more effort communicating that you've thought about what you're asking (including effort in laying out what you're even asking ) if you expect any effort to be put into a response. Of your three comments here, two out of three are (ambiguous) one-liners, and three out of three come off like you took all of 10 seconds to bang them out before hitting the "reply" button. Even if that happens,…

It's fine if you don't want to keep responding... but in case you want clarity, what I was asking is "Why should anyone spend any time at all adding microdata, or failing that, using CSS class names to emulate microdata?"

Your original comment read to me like, "Here's how you can do something similar using CSS class names without using the microformats standards." My question was, why do either?

With microformats, at least it's supposed to be a machine-parseable standard for crawlers and the like. It never got much traction, and of the times I've used it, absolutely no measurable benefits (in terms of SEO or indexability) were seen at all.

With descriptive CSS class names you come up with yourself, not adhering to any standard, it seems even less likely that any crawler would be able to use them meaningfully. It's even less "semantic" than microdata or semantic HTML5 tags.

So my question was, what is the benefit of doing that? Are these class names just reminders for yourself, months later, so you can remember what a certain component was supposed to do? Or does it help your development/debugging/testing workflow somehow (such as being able to easily target widgets in the DOM for automated testing, perhaps?)

I wasn't trying to dismiss your comment, just trying to understand the value of putting in that effort. I'm sorry if it came across as flippant, there's just a lot that gets lost in online posts. Anyway, feel free to elaborate if you'd like, but if you just want to move on, that's totally fine too :)

Re: Microformats Wiki

#69

Post by cxr »

a-priori wrote: post #59
kitd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Describing the presentation of content is the sole purpose of CSS. But describing the presentation of content isn't the sole purpose of the `class` attribute. Having meaningful domain-related names included in the class makes UI testing a lot easier.

As I said in my parent comment, there's other attributes better suited to purposes like this rather than overloading the `class` attribute. You can, for example, use a `data-testid` attribute if the element can't be identified reliably with another attribute, such as the `id` or `role`.

A person might get the impression based on your comments that classes are somehow "for" CSS (they're not) and that using them for some non-CSS use is somehow "wrong" (it's not). Meanwhile almost everything you're saying here is opposite what the HTML spec says.

As I said in my (earlier) response to you: using the "class" attribute for semantic, non-styling purpose is not "overloading" or misusing it. It is simply using it. (Just like the folks who developed CSS were able to get use out of element classes by baking tier-one support for them into their selector language. CSS has no claim to the right and proper use of an attribute that predates CSS.) To argue against this is revisionism.

The HTML5 data attributes also aren't a replacement for proper use of the class attribute, either. What the class attribute encodes (surprise) the class that the content belongs to. The data attribute payload encodes a particular value associated with a given key for a particular instance (e.g. the testid payload from your own example). And aside from the use cases being incomparable, the HTML spec says they shouldn't be used the way you're saying.

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