jQuery Seek Attention Plugin

The jQuery seek plugin is very cool. It goes along with the css psuedo class "target". It’ll highlight an area on the page onClick and ca bring a great pop to a page. Give this one a try, I could see this being very useful for those long FAQ lists.

Google’s android vs the iPhone

With the release of Google’s android phone, there are already comparisons to the iPhone. This video lays it out real nice and tells you what you have to look forward to with Android.

Avoiding the Pownce Effect

There seems to be more and more twitter–killer sites out there and, for the most part, they all fail. This article takes a look at why Twitter is so powerful and some things to avoid.

3 CSS classes you should all have

Let me save you some time: .left, .right and .clear. This is something most are already including, but I always think it’s helpful to see what others are doing.

Because I’m a web dork (nice way to start a post, huh?), I was poking around YouTube last weekend and decided to crack it open in FireBug.

I was on YouTube’s MayerMusic channel fiddling around with the video info section and notice that some of the info was wrapped in a quasi familiar class “vfacets”. This appears to be some sort of Microformat; but none that I’ve ever seen.

After seeing that, I decided to do a little digging (digging = 5 mins of Googling), and eventually found a pretty undetailed page about group examples of Microformats.

Generally, I find that Google’s front end development is a disgrace to the Internet (no offense…), but it seems like they’re buying into the concept of Microformats. With that in mind I thought I’d talk about how Microformat groups could be used.

Usage

Many of us are familiar with the most common types of Microformats (hCalendar, hCard, hReview, and XFN). There are also many that are still in draft form like hResume, geo, and rel-directory. However, it seems that a new type could be emerging for grouping information.

The link above listed out 4 examples of major sites using Microformat groups: YouTube, Magnolia, Linkedin and Flickr. I really like how Google (youtube) is marking it up though, so I’m going to get in to that.

YouTube vEntry markup

<div class="v120vEntry">
<div class="vstill">
<a href="/user/spoiledmilk"><img src="2.jpg" class="vimg"></a>
</div>
<div class="vtitle">
<a href="/profile?user=spoiledmilk">spoiledmilk</a>
</div>
<div class="vfacets">
<span class="grayText">Joined:</span> August 02, 2006<br>
<span class="grayText">Videos:</span> <a href="/profile_videos?user=spoiledmilk">21</a>
</div>
</div>

In marking up user information they are using:

• ventry as a wrapper
• vstill for the user image link
• vimg for the image itself
• vtitle for the user’s name
• vfacets for, what seems to be, general information

I’m wondering why Google is going with this. In the past I think it’s safe to say that they don’t really do things like this unless they’re planning to use it in something they build. Not to take shots at Google, but they don’t really do things for the greater good of the web community (correct me if I’m wrong).

Consistent user tagging

The basis for using something like a vcard class is to let the browser, user, spambot, or software know that a page contains contact information (and your now beautifully marked up e–mail address). This same principle applies to Google’s vEntry.

Let’s consider that Google is building a large social networking platform; I know that the main complaint I have with all these new networking sites is that you have to constantly rebuild your contact list. Marking up a member’s information in a consistent way would aid in search and ease the pain of finding those Twitter followers (for example) we all love so much. Or even for building some sort of Internet phone book.

What are they scheming?

What’s Google planning? What else can be done with this new microformat? Did I completely miss a huge glaring detail here?

Maybe this isn’t even Google code, it could be left over from when they bought out YouTube. I guess we won’t know for sure until we can pick apart Google’s brain and find out what’s going on in there.

In the mean time, watch out for this new Microformat, I have a feeling they’ll be popping up in other Google sites as well.