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Microformats Cheat Sheet

Microformats allow us to add more information to our documents on the web, embedding semantic data in web pages that can then be parsed and used in other applications. This reference sheet contains an overview of the most often used microformats.

Note: It turns out there is actually already a rather nice Microformats Cheat Sheet available (in PDF), by Brian Suda. That'll teach me to search for other cheat sheets before starting work on mine!

The Microformats cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a designer or developer's desk, to make life a bit easier. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size Microformats cheat sheet.

Further information on Microformats and their specifications can be found at microformats.org.

iCalendar and hCalendar

Thumbnail highlighting iCalendar and hCalendar section. iCalendar is a common format for calendar documents on the web, and hCalendar is a microformat based upon the same standard. Essentially, it is a collection of attributes that allow you to identify events contained in an (X)HTML document. This section includes an example of an event in iCalendar and hCalendar formats.

hReview

Thumbnail highlighting hReview section. hReview is a microformat that allows the marking up of reviews within (X)HTML documents. This section contains a sample review marked up with hReview.

vCard and hCard

Thumbnail highlighting vCard and hCard sections. vCard is a commonly used format for sharing contact details for people, and hCard is a microformat allowing you to mark up contact and personal information for people within web pages.

RelLicense and RelTag

Thumbnail highlighting RelLicense and RelTag sections. RelLicense and RelTag allow you to add extra meaning to links within web documents, identifying links to licenses or that are used for tagging purposes.

XFN Format and Values

Thumbnail highlighting XFN Format and Values sections. XFN is a microformat allowing you to identify relationships with people you link to within web documents, whether they are friends, family, co-workers or just people you once met. These sections show an example use of XFN, and a list of the valid values for XFN information.

Dates

Thumbnail highlighting dates section. Microformats use ISO 8601 format dates. This section details the specification, showing examples dates in their respective formats.

Download

So now that you know what it does, please feel free to print out the Microformats cheat sheet:

And finally, if you like the cheat sheets, and want to say thanks, please consider buying me something from my Amazon Wishlist. Thankyou very much to those who have already hunted it down and sent me something nice - I'm very grateful!

Please note: If you wish to link to the Microformats cheat sheet from elsewhere, please link to this page so others find the description, rather than linking directly to the sheet.

Microformats Cheat Sheet, by Dave Child, was posted on 09 September 2006 and has been tagged with webdev, cheatsheet, standards, xhtml, html, reference, microformats, programming, web, pdf, hcard and webdesign.

49 Comments

Great resource, Dave... thanks!

But you really want Season 2 of Knight Rider?!

Oh Dave... you shouldn't want that, Dave.

#1, Silus Grok, United States, 9 September 2006. Reply to this.

Am I to understand that you believe another season of Knight Rider to be superior? :)

#2, Dave Child, Unknown, 9 September 2006. Reply to this.

The one before the first one.

; )

#3, Silus Grok, United States, 9 September 2006. Reply to this.

I need more room on my cube to put this up! :)

#4, Chris Korhonen, United Kingdom, 10 September 2006. Reply to this.

I love you... :* keep seeding :)

#5, Dapuzz, Italy, 10 September 2006. Reply to this.

Excellent Dave, It was a pleasure meeting you at d.construct, thank you for all these cheatsheets.

#6, James McCarthy, United Kingdom, 10 September 2006. Reply to this.

Are you aware that a cheat sheet already exists?
http://suda.co.uk/projects/microformats/cheatsheet/

#7, Drew McLellan, United Kingdom, 11 September 2006. Reply to this.

Hi Drew. No, I hadn't seen that. It's a great cheat sheet though!

#8, Dave Child, Unknown, 11 September 2006. Reply to this.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for another great cheat sheet. Very nicely done, as usual. I'll take the PDF version, please!

#9, Matt, United States, 12 September 2006. Reply to this.

I love www.addedbytes.com :)) thx

#10, akira, Russian Federation, 14 September 2006. Reply to this.

Use PNGOut before posting PNG files!

#11, Vid0, Lithuania, 20 September 2006. Reply to this.

There are no seeds for the torrent.

#12, Martin Melcher, Germany, 15 October 2006. Reply to this.

Didn?t know very much about Microformats up till know,
so thanx for these useful cheats.

#13, Jasja, Netherlands, 10 July 2007. Reply to this.

Very useful for me!!! Thank you bro!

#14, Kula Shaker, Unknown, 29 August 2007. Reply to this.

Thanks very much! I just downloaded all of them. Great job!!!

#15, Alex Soft, Unknown, 18 September 2007. Reply to this.

great collection.
thanks for sharing.

#16, lee, Philippines, 14 October 2007. Reply to this.

Vey useful. Makes it a lot easier to remember all the different formats.

#17, Webhosty, Denmark, 20 December 2007. Reply to this.

Thank you very much for the cheet sheet. It is a great collection and helps a lot.

#18, Michael Bulgarien, United Kingdom, 30 January 2008. Reply to this.

Stumbled across this.. not familiar with microformats. This will help as I dive further into it.

#19, apteric, United States, 9 February 2008. Reply to this.

Very usefull hoby Dave, thanks!

#20, amrinz, Indonesia, 1 March 2008. Reply to this.

Hi Dave!

I like your cheat sheets very much, they've got a their static place on the wall behind my 22" TFT! :)

I read that your cheat sheets consume much bandwidth - as I have bandwidth in masses here on my server, I would be happy to provide a german mirror of your cheatsheets :)

You could place the link to the mirror then on your website and tell them to download there first..

That would be my way to thank you for your cheat sheets.. :)

Mail me at:
mm (at) mpathy (dot) de

PS, if you got the time, cheatsheets for (just ideas!):
* Python (or call it the "better" Ruby..)
* Django (or call it the "far better" Ruby on Rails..)
* Mercurial or Subversion - Version Control Cheatsheet
* a more AJAX-focused JavaScript cheatsheets

#21, Markus Majer, Germany, 1 March 2008. Reply to this.

The section titled "XFN Format" has several instances of the same error. There is no need, nor is it desirable for there to be commas in a rel value. Please correct that as one person already has been misled by that section of this cheatsheet.

http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats/IRC/2008-03-19#T074213

#22, Tantek, United States, 19 March 2008. Reply to this.

Nice piece. Microformats offer a very neat solution to a whole range of practical problems. I reckon they?re a good step towards moving from a Web of Documents to a more general Web of Data. The coolest bit being that they?re not inventing whole new formats for things that can already be done: simple descriptions, lists, hierarchies etc. XHTML can cover all of these nicely.

#23, ampere, Italy, 13 May 2008. Reply to this.

I planned to learn to use microformats, so this cheatsheet will push me to finally do it.

Great one as always, thanks.

#24, chris, United States, 13 January 2009. Reply to this.

I´ve been using those microformats and that cheatsheet works perfectly! It´s a great resource for who works with it.

#25, Fornecedores, Brazil, 27 January 2009. Reply to this.

Very useful, thanks again.

#26, Alex from Nürnberg, Germany, 29 January 2009. Reply to this.

Perfect Cheat Sheet !
Very useful :)
Thank you very much.

http://www.computerbooksshop.com

#27, Tu Vida, Australia, 8 April 2009. Reply to this.

Great sheet, this is very helpfull for me.

#28, Tuning Blog, Germany, 8 June 2009. Reply to this.

Thank you very much for the cheet sheet!!

#29, elektroschocker, Unknown, 1 July 2009. Reply to this.

awesome, rely cool cheet sheet. I was searching for this. Need it for a drupal Ical. node type. Thanks for this.

#30, MiyukiBeads, Unknown, 16 July 2009. Reply to this.

Very usefull , thanks!

#31, Trockenfutter, Germany, 25 July 2009. Reply to this.

Did not know much about Microformats. Thank you for the many useful information.
bye

#32, Anna-Maria, Germany, 15 September 2009. Reply to this.

Excellent piece. Microformats provide the best solution for a wide range of problems. It is a good step from a Web document to a general Web of Data. You see, you do not have to invent new things-it's enough proven only do a little bit better. :-) E.g. simple descriptions, lists, hierarchies, etc. XHTML can perform these tasks very well. Thank you very much!

#33, Anabole Kultsteroide, Germany/ Flensburg, 2 October 2009. Reply to this.

Very excellent piece these cheat sheets for Microformats.

#34, Theo, Germany, 4 December 2009. Reply to this.

Great resource for people who are interessted in using microformats, your cheatsheats work! That's find, thank you for that!

#35, hemden online shop, 10 December 2009. Reply to this.

I like your cheat sheets. Very useful. Thanks

#36, Kredit Vergleich, Germany, 5 February 2010. Reply to this.

Great work, very useful. Thanks

#37, online Reisebüro, Germany, 14 February 2010. Reply to this.

I reckon they?re a good step towards moving from a Web of Documents to a more general Web of Data. The coolest bit being that they?re not inventing whole new formats for things that can already be done: simple descriptions, lists, hierarchies etc. XHTML can cover all of these nicely.

#38, ClubPenguinCheats, US, 16 March 2010. Reply to this.

Very useful Microformat Cheats. Thanks

#39, Holzbriketts, Austria, 27 July 2010. Reply to this.

Thank you. Use this a lot and have it printed and now on my front desk!

#40, Luke, USA, 2 November 2010. Reply to this.

This post has a very good quality. Microformats are the future, I guess. So one should get familiar.

#41, Jan from Festzinskonto, Germany, 11 November 2010. Reply to this.

You are SUCH a lifesaver!!!!! These are the best cheatsheets!

#42, ---, 5 January 2011. Reply to this.

A very powerful and useful cheat list indeed.

Might come very handy one day.

Wife will be proud of me ;)

Michael

#43, Michael, USA, 24 February 2011. Reply to this.

Tahnk you for doing these and the PDF format is really easy to use.

#44, Jim, USA, 1 July 2011. Reply to this.

Im new to web design and this has been a total life saver. Have all the pdf files printed and posted on my office wall.

#45, Jake Burke, USA, 24 August 2011. Reply to this.

Thanks for the list of Microformats, my boyfriend is currently driving me nuts because he is looking for something like this and could not find one. Hope that will help him :-).

#46, Maria, Germany, 5 November 2011. Reply to this.

thanks for sharing the sheets, they're quite usefull since i'm just getting into using microformats.

#47, GinTronic, 6 November 2011. Reply to this.

Where were you when I was still a school? I really like your cheat sheets, they help me a lot!

#48, --, Austria, 25 November 2011. Reply to this.

Google just released their awesome micro formats rich snippet tester, http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets , which makes these cheat sheets the most awesome thing this side of Bing. Thanks man!!

Josh

#49, Josh, USA, 28 February 2012. Reply to this.