Category: HTML5

Google, Yahoo and Bing announced schema.org yesterday.

Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured data. On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.

A shared markup vocabulary makes easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. So, in the spirit of sitemaps.org, Bing, Google and Yahoo! have come together to provide a shared collection of schemas that webmasters can use.

I immediately began to think about how this would apply to my frequently used hReview microformat. I looked at the schema for books, and tried to see how I could incorporate that into a book review if I continue to use the hReview microformat to do book reviews.

Here’s what I came up with. I’d love comments. The additions to the hReview from the book schema are in red.

<div class="hreview"
itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Book">
<span style="display:none">product</span>
<p><img class="photo" src="image.jpg" alt="alt here"></p>
<div class="description" itemprop="reviews">
<p><a class="fn url" itemprop="name url" href="link here"
title="affiliate link to Amazon"><cite>book title
here</cite></a>
by <span itemprop="author">author's name</span> is from
 <span itemprop="publisher">publisher's
name</span>, <span itemprop="datePublished">date
here</span>.
Text of the review here.</p>
<p>Text of the review here.</p>
<p>Text of the review here.</p>
<p class="summary">Summary: text of the summary</p>
<p><span class="reviewer vcard">A review by
<a href="http://www.webteacher.ws/" rel="me">Virginia
DeBolt</a></span> of <cite itemprop="name">
book title here</cite>
<span class="rating" itemprop="rating">
(rating: n stars)</span></span></p>
</div>
</div>

What I’m wondering.

1. Is the hReview microformat even needed since there is so much overlap between the book schema and the hReview microformat. It’s redundant. Should reviewers switch to the schema and abandon the microformat?
2. I’m wondering about putting an itemprop in the cite element, since most of the schema HTML is added with span tags. It seems more semantic to me.

What do you think? Are schemas going to replace microformats completely?