Nobody uses them?! Why? Can’t you developers see the benefit in them or are you just lazy? Microformats are totally unobtrusive, and they don’t affect your efficiency significantly. There’s only benefits to be had. In fact, there already exists scripts to take advantage of them at http://userscripts.org. For instance http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3851 and http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24139 . Just imagine if every site used them, and all the things you could use them for. Think of them like file extension for your html segments. And while we’re at it, go learn some http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page too.
Now, there is another problem. With a more semantic web, protecting against data miners will be a even more of an issue than it already is, but is the solution really to keep the Web in the dark ages? And trust me, this is the dark ages. In a few years or decades, depending on us, you’ll see a web, that apparently many of you can’t even imagine now.
I’ve always been interested in semantics in HTML, but it was only recently, when I attended a lecture for a new course called “Semantic technologies” that I started to evangelize about it again. Anyway, at this lecture, I was told of something I hadn’t even dreamed of. He started out with a common every day “problem”. He wanted to see a movie at a cinema, but didn’t know which. To solve this, he went to http://www.google.com/movies where sure enough, he found a movie he’d go to.
Next, he brought up: How do I get there in time? To solve this, he went to http://trafikanten.no/ which for non-Norwegians is a site for finding the bus schedule. He Then went on about how more complicated this was than it could be, and it was then a light went on over my head. Yes, this was complicated. I know it’s just a matter of typing in the address of the cinema and my address and selecting the time for when I wanted to arrive, but dammit, this could so easily be done with a semantic web. Then he continued to talk about something I’v never used: RDF’s OWL etc. etc. to solve problems like these. I’ll get there.
Now of course, this example was quite trivial. For those of you who still don’t see it, he continued to extend the problem with issues like: where is the nearest place to eat? What if the friends I’m meeting can’t reach the place in time? How do I get home? Now of course, this is just for motivation. The point is not to imagine every possible scenario. That’s exactly why we need semantics, so that everyone will be able to solve their problem without any fuss. So please, I urge you to at least try. Start soft by slapping some extra classes on your html (microformats), then once you get your first taste of pure benefit, maybe you’ll get the motivation you need.