 | This page in a nutshell: Using {{start-date}} and {{end-date}} have no visible impact but make chronological dates available for interoperability with other web applications, just as Wikipedia geographical information appears on Google Maps and Google Earth. The changes create microformatted data which provide an API from the Wikipedia knowledge base to XHTML-aware applications, many more of which will soon be developed. |
I am currently going through articles that have infoboxes that are capable of emitting microformat data to internet applications that understand them. These changes do not alter any visible characteristics. Specifically, they do not add or subtract any autolinking or autoformating. Any linking or formatting should be exactly as it was prior to the edit. What I am doing is one of the following:
- wrapping the date for an event in a template. The date remains human readable in its original form in the wikitext. The article display should appear no differently after the edit.
- wrapping a placename in a template. The article display should remain the same.
- adding some infobox classes that have no impact on the display. These allow the pages to emit more microformats.
If anyone feels the appearance or the behavior of the page is in any way different, please revert my edit, and if possible contact me. (talk)
- If this doesn't do anything, then why are you doing it?'
- Actually, it does do something. To see this, you either wait a year until most of the major browsers have microformat functionality as they are currently promising. Or, you can see it now by using an add-on toolbar for Firefox. There is one for IE, but I can't get it to work with live data, so it's pretty useless at the time of this writing. Steps to see microformats now:
- After installing Firefox (free), next add Firefox's free Operator toolbar.
- Click the options button on the far right of the toolbar. Get out of actions mode by clicking "Data formats" radio button, and "Debug mode" check box.
- Go to Chrysler Building, click Contacts on the Operator toolbar, then click "Chrysler building". Choose Find with Google maps. You should see a close in view of Chrysler building from space. You can do the same with Yahoo maps, except they default to a street map. (In actions mode, this is more simple- there is just a button that says find with Google maps that highlights.) Okay. That's location microformat data. What about time?
- Go to an event article, such as 2007 Blue Angels South Carolina crash. The toolbar's button events are active. Click 2007 Blue angels... and select "add to Yahoo calendar". [1]
- What you will see on the Yahoo site is the date, the name of the event, and where it happened. This could as well have been a famous president's birthday or some other notable event for a person to put in their calendars. Is the date encoding just for these calendar applications? Certainly not- picture a Google earth with the 4th dimension of time. This may well have been the date of an ancient battle, and the application might not be a boring calendar application, but a Wayback machine that shows a realistic virtual view of the city and time period.
- Now go to history and click a version previous to my edit of 2007 Blue Angels South Carolina crash.
- Click Events. You will see that the event is "Invalid- click for more details". The reason why this error message is displayed is that the article does not contain a microformatted date for the event.
That's what {{start-date}} edit is providing.
More info may be found at WP:UF#hcalendar.
Notes
edit- ^ If you are in actions mode and Add to Yahoo or Google calendar don't appear and are not greyed either, then click the options button on the far right of the toolbar, click the actions tab. Click new button. In the Action dialog, press the down arrow and you will see in the list "add to Yahoo calendar". Select that and click ok, then exit from the options dialogs. You should now be able to see Add to Yahoo Calendar, which is active.