Microformats are tiny little markup definitions built on top of, usually, HTML or XHTML.
The available microformats are hCalendar, hReview, hCard, RelLicense, RelTag, XFN Format etc.,
The basic format of hCard is to use vCard object/property names in lower-case for class names, and to map the nesting of vCard objects directly into nested XHTML elements.
For example, Here is a sample vCard
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:Jeffrey Thomas
END:VCARD
and an equivalent in literal hCard:
< p class=”vcard”> < span class=”fn”>Jeffrey Thomas < \span > < \ p>
There are several ruby parser for parsing this microformats to mention a few like mofo, hpricot etc
Check the microformats wiki for further details.
Importance of Microformats
Helps in – Aggregation Sites and Sharing Information with a Specific Community
You can also get more information from this blog about microformats and how websites using this.
