Re: RDFa in <head>

On 5/5/09 11:53, Mark Birbeck wrote:
> Hi Stéphane,
>
>> I've noticed some RDFa-enabled websites which output all the RDFa in a bunch
>> of<meta>  tags in the<head>  of the HTML documents, see for example
>> http://www.slideshare.net/danbri/danbri-foaf-talk-social-web-camp-www2009
>>
>> While the extracted RDF is valid and informative, is that considered best
>> practice? (as opposed to inline RDFa in the body of the document).
>
> I would say it depends on what you are trying to achieve, but I'd
> certainly encourage putting the information inline in the body, where
> possible, and can think of at least two benefits to doing so; more
> opportunities to enrich the UI, and a more natural distinction between
> the web-page, and the topic of the web-page.

[snip]

I think much also depends on the workflow and tooling behind the site.

In some companies you'll often see rapid changes to the structure and 
content of pages, sometimes with different staff, tools, sub-contractors 
etc doing the work. In this kind of fragile, volatile environment, RDFa 
(or even microformats) may be seen as a luxury, an oddity, or a 
pointless quirky remnant of some previous design or designer. Tucking 
the data away in the HTML header might under such circumstances keep it 
out of harm's way. It also of course creates risk that the data goes out 
of date; however this may not be such a problem in database-backed sites...

cheers,

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 5 May 2009 10:49:40 UTC