The Modern Web

RDFa

The Resource Description Format in Attributes (RDFa) is an extension of HTML that provides context to content using a whole new set of bespoke attributes. The main syntax is known as RDFa Core, and a simple subset called RDFa Lite is also available. Both rely on predefined schema (descriptions of data) to describe content.

Better than telling you what that means, I’ll show you (those years at screenwriting school didn’t go to waste!). One common item of data across the Web, especially on blogs and news sites, is a date. Quite often you’ll see a date marked up something like this:

<p class="date">2013-04-01</p>

The markup is functional and uncomplicated, but the only semantic context is provided by the class name. With RDFa Lite, you can ...