microformats, rdf or microdata

Question

Is there any difference between using one of this technologies?

I'm building now a site using HTML5, and I'm having hard time to decide which one of them to use. I cannot see any difference between them, else the syntax size, which I'm not quite sure is an advantage for the microformats side.

Shelves

See also the questions Schema.org vs microformats, RDF and microdata future, Microdata vs RFDa – Vicarage

possible duplicate of What is the relationship between RDF, RDFa, Microformats and Microdata – Sequestrate

@Plantface have you seen the date on this question and the other one? Mine been asked on 2010!! and the one that you have reported on 2013!!!! If someone duplicated someone is the other one!! Why did you report before checking things out??? And another thing - my question got 43 upvotes (other one only 15), and mine have 6 answers (other one only 3). So if someone duplicated someone is that question and not mine! Please remove your flag. – Shelves

@Shelves correct, chronologically it doesn't make sense. However, the question is almost the same and the answer to the newer one is comprehensive and more up-to-date, while the accepted answer to this one is out of date. That's why I marked it as a possible duplicate. And I'm not sure the duplicate annotation in stackoverflow indicates direction to be honest! I marked it, I'll let the audit reviewers deal with this decision. – Sequestrate

@Plantface I have edited my question in respond to the system msg I have received, asking me to edit it if I thing the flag wasn't correct. And yes, I have responded emotional, sorry for that. I do understand your point (flag points out not that accurate information. Would be better if it was "More updated answer could be found here"). My question been asked way long time ago. More comprehensive answers are always welcome, but still I cannot avoid the feeling of why that guy duplicated my question, therefor drove answers there, which could be answered here. – Shelves

Answer 1

*Edit, May 2015: Times have changed... again. Schema.org seems the way to go, using either microdata (W3C note) or RDFa (W3C recommendation), where the RDFa Lite variant is easiest to learn. Meanwhile recently Microformats released a new version as well, which nobody is paying attention to currently.

Also see the answer to What is the relationship between RDF, RDFa, Microformats and Microdata?

Edit, August 2011: Times have changed. Forget my recommendation below. Just use microdata and forget that the other two exist.

Microformats: the oldest and the simplest of the three. If the existing specs cover your needs (that is, you want to mark up addresses, events, friend links, or another one of the supported data types), then they are a nice and practical choice. The problem is that you cannot make your own microformat if you want to mark up some kind of data that's not supported by the official specs.

RDFa: This one is based on W3C's RDF data model (it's basically a way of embedding RDF data into HTML pages). RDF has been around for a long time and there's a large amount of fancy tools for doing stuff with RDF data (stores, search engines, query languages, graph visualizers and so on). So RDFa takes you into this big existing ecosystem. But this also makes RDFa kind of complicated, and the learning curve is steeper than for the other proposals.

Microdata: This is Ian Hickson's counter-proposal to RDFa. In spirit, it is an extensible version of microformats. It doesn't have the RDF connection and is simpler than RDFa. It's still very new and hasn't seen much adoption yet, so it's a bit early to tell. Update: schema.org really seals the deal here.

My recommendation would be to go with microformats if they cover your need, and RDFa otherwise.

Utrecht

At the end I have decided using Microdatas, especially cause the site I'm creating is an HTML5 one. Google likes it, and for me- that whats count. Do you guys know any other reason? – Shelves

@Shlomi.A.: I would go for Microdata because of it being part of the HTML5 API set, I strongly believe they'll be the standard in the near future when HTML5 will be adopted more widely. – Perfume

Given that all the main players have agreed on Microdata (see schema.org), the updated recommendation is correct -- go with Microdata :) – Fully

Also why I would recommend microdata instead of microformats is how it is handled. Microformats uses the class attribute to structure data. Microdata instead uses additional attributes, so it doesn't conflict with styles. This is pretty annoying if you should add microformats to a site using the microformat classes for styling. – Narcotize

Times have changed again -- RDFa Lite is a W3C Recommendation and Microdata is only a W3C Working Group Note. – Compiler

Indeed, see this message and that question for an opposite argumentation. – Selfidentity

Answer 2

I would use Microdata given that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have collaborated on Microdata and formalized the schemas at http://schema.org. There aren't many tools out there and some spec bugs they have (in particular with their examples), it's only a matter of time before it has more widespread adoption.

Fully

Answer 3

November 2012:

Now that e-commerce schemas from the GoodRelations project have been integrated into schema.org, you have even more reasons to use microdata. (additionally to the ones @cygri has pointed out.)

Until now, GoodRelations and Schema.org were related, but separate vocabularies. With this integration, the bulk of the GoodRelations vocabulary is now available in schema.org.

For those who had been using RDFa to markup GoodRelations, the situation is unchanged. The developer of GoodRelations, Martin Hepp, said that "GoodRelations will remain an independent vocabulary, and usable in RDFa and other RDF syntaxes."

But most of the sites that have been using schema.org have been employing microdata, including e-commerce giants like WalMart, Overstock and eBay. For these sites, the type of e-commerce information that can be marked with microdata has been vastly extended.

So if you are starting from scratch, go with microdata. But If you are already using RDFa, there is no reason to change now.

Berg

Answer 4

RDF is just more powerful as it supports things like FOAF.

If you are not up for that complexity, just use Schema.org.

All sorted and oh, Search Engines like it too.

Exceptive

I had to look this up: "FOAF is a computer language defining a dictionary of people-related terms that can be used in structured data (e.g. RDFa, JSON-LD, Linked Data)." (foaf-project.org) – Peal

Answer 5

RDFa -> more resources (blank nodes, CURIE etc..)

Microformarts -> simply and popular, minor resources and no support to custom vocabularies

Microdata -> cool itemref resource, very very new...

Tressa

Hey and thanks for your answer. I have replied above you. Cheers :) – Shelves

Answer 6

Microdata is RDFa reborn tougher as seen from support to CURIEs being absent. schema.org addresses only the cross-cutting concern of search. Unless the content relates to domain specific aspects with semantic significance that merits it's own vocab or is simple enough to be covered by microdata, it might be just noise treated as spammy content by good search rank algorithm.
The fundamental difference from webmaster viewpoint is
schema.org + microdata is for content significant in the context of search
microformats is for the simplest content pieces that don't merit syntactic overheads
other vocabs + RDFa is for semantic content to be utilized through parsers with domain-specific significance outside searching context
and all 3 blend well in XHTML too, that's useful from analogy of serving weblog as feed for instance.
Key point here is there are better reasons to opt for microdata than being early bird at adopting it, while being respectful of earlier, more widely successfully deployed means.

Konstanz