I must admit, I was very surprised when I pulled it out of the box and saw how thick it was. How can you possibly write that much detail on something as simple as microformats?

Well, I think John has done a decent job of filling that space with a mix of interesting ideas, case studies and a great reference section in the back for quick reference once you start development using microformats.

I found myself learning some of the more subtle, interesting details about microformats that I was not aware of before and also came up with a few more ideas on where and when I would like to use them next in some of my own work.

Here is a quick breakdown of what I thought about this book:

Introducing Microformats

This section gives you a brief introduction to what microformats are, why they were developed and why you should think about using them.

Using Microformats

This section starts with the semantic XHTML intro, but doesn’t dwell on it too long and quickly leads into XHTML compounds and segways nicely into the current limitations of XHTML and why exactly you would need to use microformats.

Next up is a dissection and explaination of each type of microformat, starting with elemental microformats such as rel-tag, rel-nofollow, votelinks and XFN. After that, more complicated compound microformats are discussed in detail including geo, adr, hCard, hCalendar, hReview, hResume and finally hAtom.

It’s good to see each microformat picked apart, explained in detail about what problem it is trying to solve and then explaining how to code each solution into your XHTML document. I found microformats quite verbose when it came to naming conventions and classes in the past, but this section seemed to answer most of those questions I had with regards to what each microformat was trying to achieve.

Case Studies

Usually case studies are pretty dull so I wasn’t really expecting much from this chapter. The case studies include Cork’d and Yahoo and actually are quite interesting as John interviews Dan Cederholm (Cork’d) as well as Nate Koechley (Yahoo) and they speak of their dealing with microformats on each of their websites.

Reverse engineering, practical problems and weaknesses of current microformats, developing them in large corporations with larger development teams and general practical advice when it comes to implementing microformats are the real interesting points that come out of this section.

I wouldn’t go back and read this again, but it really gets you thinking about how you could start to develop and maintain microformats if you are working in a large company or on an up-and-coming project.

Developing Microformats

This breaks down the process of actually introducing microformats and how they are researched, documented and then eventually drafted up into official microformats.

Microformats Specification Index

Microformat specifications, design patterns, tools, services, publishers and links to all of this information neatly packaged up at the end of the book. I like how it breaks the microformats properties into ‘optional’ and ‘required’. A great quick reference section that I would rather use than the current microformats wiki.

Summary

I don’t think this is any ground breaking new information for most competent standards developers out there, but I personally found it interesting enough to read all the way through and learned quite a few small, subtle things about microformats.

This book has me thinking a lot about how I am going to use microformats in future projects and has given me some new ideas that I didn’t have before reading the book. It’s well written and I love the fact that a local writer has added some Australian flavour to it through the pictures and examples used through local websites and events.

Most importantly, it has an excellent reference section that will stay fairly up-to-date in the next year or so. I think the format of this book is a very simple and really helps you to figure out how to get started with microformats and exactly why you should do so.

Rating: 8 / 10