Microformat Exercise Part 2: Faculty Listings
Today we saw a preview of the new English Department website that featured a directory listing of faculty members. Here’s an example sample of some of the markup for one faculty member
HTML:
<strong><a href=“bio/lastnameFirstInitial.shtml”>Jane Doe
</a> </strong><br /> Composition, Literature
<br /> Office: Building 116
<br /> <a href=“mailto:dalexich@csuchico.edu”>jdoe@csuchico.edu
</a> </td>
If we add a few classes to this existing structure (plus a few @span@s) we could make the site microformat compatible.
HTML:
<td width=“34%” class=“vcard”> <a class=“url” href=“bio/lastnameFirstInitial.shtml”>Jane Doe
</a> <span class=“org organizational-unit”>Composition, Literature
</span><br /> <span class=“tel”>Phone:
</span><span class=“work”>898-0000
</span><br /> <span class=“adr work additional-address”>Office: Building
</span> 116
<br /> <a class=“email” href=“mailto:dalexich@csuchico.edu”>jdoe@csuchico.edu
</a> </td>
Bam! Microformat compatible.
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May 8th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Exactly! We rolled out a faculty experts directory last month. As I was watching it, I wanted to pound my head into the table because it’s ripe for microformats. I know the developer, and I hope that by the start of school in the Fall, we’ll be able to showcase the use of microformats there. It’s not like it’s hard - you just have to work in the classes to the framework for the directory’s output. It just takes that ever precious time.
May 9th, 2006 at 7:22 am
As I sat there watching the unveiling of this new site the words microformats and presentation crossed my mind. Microformats are virtually unknown, so I’m thinking of putting together a presentation what are microformats and why we should use microformats.
The other great part about the meeting where the site design was showcased was that someone raised the concern about SPAM bots. I couldn’t help but think about the lunchtime discussion we had at SXSW about SPAM bots. I tried to point out that bots were so sophisticated that it doesn’t really matter, they’d find your address somehow.
May 10th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Here’s a demo page showing results of a directory search. There are two returns, each marked up with hCard microformats. The organizational info at the bottom of the page is also marked up with hCard.
http://www.southwestern.edu/~ramseyp/sandbox/su-dir-microformats.php
It’s a canned page, the links are mostly dead, I just pulled the output of the results of a search, changed the personal info around and tossed in hCard classes. I added a parser link at the end of the results to brian Suda’s hCard extractor for demo purposes. I want to have a localized version that also recognizes each hCard as opposed to one that extracts all hCard data.
At any rate, this is the first iteration of what I’d like to see here. Is this anything like what you were envisioning?
May 11th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Very much what I’m envisioning. Here’s the sample page I’ve been working on:
http://developer.csuchico.edu/labs/microformats/hCard/sample_person_mf_vCard.html
Much like you I’m working on a localized version of Brian Suda’s hCard extractor. Unfortunately at this point our group does not own the campus directory. For right now that leaves us at POC and hoping to eventually build a compelling argument for either becoming the maintainers of the directory to being allowed to implement our improvements. In the mean time, we’ve got other fish to fry which makes this a slow implementation process.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:54 am
I hear ya. I met with our programmer today and she’s going to get started on the extractor this week. Then she and I will try to see if we can make it play nice with Brian’s hCard XSL file.
We have a faculty experts page, where people can find faculty who specialize in this and that. That’s another place I want to seed microformats across. Do you have anything like that? You could implement your idea there?
May 11th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Not that I’m aware of. Again, it’s all a matter of ownership. We own only a handful of sites and primarily provide web services to others groups on campus.
Our big service is the campus portal that doesn’t offer a lot of opportunities for microformats with the exception of our Academic Calendar page, which I have marked up with microformats (see link below).
However, it’s not in production at the moment because Outlook has a sketchy iCal implementation so there would not be a great reward to making that available.
Also, this goes back to the whole localized converter from hCalendar to iCal.
http://developer.csuchico.edu/labs/microformats/hCalendar/academic-calendar-mf.html
May 15th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Campus portal. Academus, right? Or are you guys straight uPortal? We roll out our Academus install this fall: http://my.southwestern.edu
I’m part of the interface team, so I get to wrestle with making it as standards-compliant as possible. We own just about everything on our site, so it’s an easier time making changes like adding microformats. Doesn’t make the time involved any less, though.
May 15th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
We’re running straight-up uPortal, not Academus. Last year I got to standard-compliant as much as possible. We ultimately control what goes into the portal so we can microformat a lot of it, especially since we manage a lot of the web-proxy content with MovableType (which lets us customize the output).