Re: RDFa and Web Directions North 2009

Ian Hickson wrote:
> Yes. Specifically regarding browsers: I don't understand the relevance of 
> browsers specifically here. Implementation cost is borne by every 
> implementor; browser vendors aren't alone here.

Highlighting the example from my previous email: consider @rel. Browsers
bear very little implementation cost for @rel: they just make it
available in the DOM API. But Google decides to do much more with it,
altering its search algorithm in fairly complex ways.

When the markup is structured data rather than rendering instructions,
the implementation-cost issue is quite different. There's only minimal
mandatory cost across all markup consumers. Any additional cost that
specific user-agents/data-miners take on is for a specific benefit they
wish to extract, i.e. some useful property from the structured data.

-Ben

Received on Tuesday, 17 February 2009 17:24:59 UTC