RDFa is a W3C Recommendation

Last Wednesday, the World Wide Web Consortium made RDFa a W3c Recommendation, setting a standard for the inclusion and parsing of rich semantic data in XHTML documents.

At first glance, RDFa sounds a lot like Microformats. And really, they’re both used in much the same way. But RDFa is more abstract; it provides a syntax to be followed, but not the actual terms used. As explained in the W3C document RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing:

Whereas microformats specify both a syntax for embedding structured data into HTML documents and a vocabulary of specific terms for each microformat, RDFa specifies only a syntax and relies on independent specification of terms (often called vocabularies or taxonomies) by others.

In other words, RDFa provides a set of rules for how data should be structured.

So how might you use RDFa? Check out some RDFa use cases outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium or read the group’s RDFa Primer. You may also be interested in the RDFa Wiki and the Resource Description Framework Working Group.

[Via SitePoint]