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We now have confirmation that something that many of us in the community have suspected for some time (owing to Ray Ozzie's Live Clipboard demo): that upcoming versions of Internet Explorer, expected some time in the next 12-18 months, will include support for microformats. This, apparently, is straight from Chris Wilson, the new platform architect for IE:

"Mash-ups will continue to drive innovation. Componentization and semantic tagging of data will be supported," Wilson told the Ajax Experience crowd. Wilson touted the harnessing of microformats, like Microsoft has done with its Live Clipboard effort, as "real world stuff" that will "make the Web much more usable." "Microformats add meaning to content in HTML," Wilson said.

With discussions around support for microformats in Firefox 3, and Apple showing strong support for microformats as well, it's only a very short amount of time before we can move on from the "so who's using microformats?" question to "okay, so now what can we do with them?"

💬 Comments from the original post

TerrellRussell · 2006-10-29 21:01:53
OpenID test...
Alan J Castonguay · 2006-10-29 21:54:51
openid test.
[...] Parece que en los últimos días se juega una de esas competiciones, tan españolas, de a ver quién la tiene más larga. Si ayer mismo comentábamos que Apple hace uso de microformatos en su nuevo webmail, hoy nos enteramos, a través de Chris Messina, de que Microsoft soportará microformatos con Internet Explorer 8. Upcoming versions of Internet Explorer, expected some time in the next 12-18 months, will include support for microformats [...]
[...] [Vía Factory City] Artículos posiblemente relacionados: ¿Está tu tema de WordPress preparado para Internet Explorer 7?Descarga Internet Explorer 7 RC 1Primer fallo en Internet Explorer 7Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3, disponible para descargaIE7 y Windows Vista ya en las redes p2p [...]
Tony Mobily · 2006-10-30 00:27:38
[Sorry, your contact form doesn't seem to work...!] Hello, At Free Software Magazine (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com), we are currently accepting new bloggers. We have become important publication in the free software world, and we feel that it's important to give good writers people a chance to use our site to connect to a large audience. Plus, this is obviously a 2-way exchange. So... here we are! We respect deeply all those people who made - and make - free software possible by talking about it in their blogs. I read your blog, and I was wondering if you would be interesting in writing one entry per week for us. Each entry should be around 800 words, and should be relevant to free software. I am obviously totally happy for you to republish your entry in your own blog! If possible, it would be great to have a 2 day delay. By default, we apply a "verbatim copy only" license to all blogs. However, you are able to choose whichever license you like - as long as it's "free enough" (the CC license, for example, is). Please let me know if you are at all interested. Thank you in any case! Merc.
/pd · 2006-10-30 07:36:03
Chris, yes thats a valid point.. I have always been asking myself Ok, Microformat exists but how do we use and leverage the technology ?? I find it so difficult to express myself, as most IT (Enterprise level) have no clue about it !! IE8 will certainly bring it to the forefront.. !!
[...] El caso es que se habla de que IE8, que podría aparecer cosa de 12 a 18 meses, y entre las nuevas funciones soportará microformatos, recientemente implementados por Apple en su webmail. Firefox tiene previsto este soporte para la versión 3.0. [...]
[...] Chris Messina makes some interesting observations in a post about IE 8 and microformats. I quote from him: [...]
Chris Wilson [MS] · 2006-10-30 15:31:56
Chris, I'm not even sure what you mean by "IE will support microformats" - as I understand it, the point is that you can add semantics to HTML without NEEDING browser support. At any rate, I didn't say anything that sounded like "IE will support microformats" in my talk - I said they add semantic meaning to HTML (duh) and LiveClipboard shows how they can be made applicable in the real world TODAY - no browser upgrade required (again, no news there), and that I think they are great (hey, Bill Gates said this publicly back in March). Somewhere along the way, this got translated into "upcoming versions of Internet Explorer, expected some time in the next 12-18 months, will include support for microformats." I did not say that, and could not make such a statement at this point anyway. There have been a few things like this going around - like MJ Foley's article - that are not correct. Watch my blog for a post shortly about them. -Chris Wilson Yeah, the Microsoft one.
Pinceladas da Web · 2006-11-09 01:20:39
INTERNET EXPLORER 8 COM SUPORTE A MICROFORMATS... Devido a correria em busca de padrões, a Apple já implementou em seu Webmail o uso de Microformats, e ao que tudo indica, a próxima versão do Internet Explorer terá um amplo suporte aos mesmos. ......
[...] via FactoryCity [...]
[...] Hace unos días que varios weblogs se hicieron eco de la “noticia” publicada en Factory City de que Internet Explorer 8.0 soportará microformatos. [...]
[...] Chris Messina had an interesting thread on his blog regarding Internet Explorer 8 and Microformats. Chris (of the microformats camp) made an odd statement regarding IE8 “supporting Microformats” — one that you wouldn’t expect from someone so close to the microformats camp. Chris Wilson, the IE Platform Architect, put it right when he said he’s “not even sure what you mean by IE8 will support microformats .. the point is that you can add semantics to HTML without NEEDING browser support.” A very smart response, since in fact, this is one of the primary tenents of microformats– no built in browser support needed. [...]
[...] I know I seem rather biased against everything Microsoft, but believe me, if they got their stuff together and became as they once were I would be singing their praises. I mean, come on! They are going to be supporting microformats in their next upgrade, too. The skins are starting to look alike. I have a feeling they will be forever trying to play catch up on this one. [...]
[...] IE 8 will support Microformats (Chris' blog is good reading in general if you don't already read it, smart guy) [...]
Adding more microformats · 2008-05-04 02:49:36
[...] to support them in the future. For example it is possible (though this is being questioned by the source) that IE 8 (hopefully standards compliant?) and Firefox III will provide discovery/support services [...]
[...] be appreciated). Internet Explorer 8 will have Microformats support implemented, and according to Chris Wilson, the new platform architect for IE: “Mash-ups will continue to drive innovation. [...]
Web Services » Tag me. · 2008-05-30 02:28:00
[...] By adding rel=”tag” into the links, the link also becomes a microformat. Microformats are a standard way to represent things in HTML, by adding rel-tag we’re standardising the link as a tag. Making the link a microformat allows the reader to find similarly tagged content from a wider source than just the current site. Firefox users can install a fantastic add-on called Operator. Operator recognises microformats on the page and in the case of tags, offers the reader entry points to content similarly tagged on other websites. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be anything similar available for Internet Explorer, yet. [...]
[...] Source: FactoryCity [...]
[...] automática; Dreamweaver en su versión más actual contiene un editor de microformatos y tanto Internet Explorer 8 como Firefox 3 apuntan hacia este nuevo estándar. Sin embargo, como me comentaba Eloi, no se [...]

Internet Explorer 8.0 will support microformats