microformats in HTML 3.0
This page documents use of microformats in HTML 3.0.
As HTML 3.0 has been superceded by HTML 3.2 (which itself was superceded by HTML 4.0 (which itself has been revised with HTML 4.01)), it is unlikely that any new content will be developed with HTML 3.0 (or 3.2 for that matter).
However, existing HTML 3.0 sites can be updated to use microformats without having to do the extra work to also update them to HTML 3.2 (or 4.0, or 4.01).
features in HTML 3
Most features in HTML 3 survived into 3.2 and 4. However, a few elements did not make it past 3.0 (or were renamed) which deserve special consideration due to their potential semantic interaction and overlap with microformats.
AU
From HTML 3.0: Information Type Elements:
The
<AU>element indicates the name of an author.
The AU element could be used for better conveyance of semantics with:
PERSON
Also from HTML 3.0: Information Type Elements:
The
<PERSON>element is used for names of people to allow these to be extracted automatically by indexing programs.
The PERSON element should be used for nearly every use of hCard to represent a person (except, when representing an author, use the more semantically specific AU element noted above instead).
ABBREV
Also from HTML 3.0: Information Type Elements:
The
<ABBREV>element is used to markup abbreviations.
The ABBREV element was subsequently shortened to ABBR. Thus any patterns (e.g. abbr-design-pattern) or parsing rules (e.g. hcard-parsing) that apply to the ABBR element for HTML 4 and later, should also be applied to the ABBREV element in HTML 3.0
Current microformat compatibility
There seems to be no issue with current implementation of the following microformats in HTML 3.0:
- hCard
- http://otvstudios.com/ - has examples of hCards for people and for an organization.