Web Dev Blog

For a second year in a row, there's a report ranking all law school home pages accredited by the ABA.  Read the results online for 2009 and  2010. One element surveyed for all schools is the use of Microformats, which is a design pattern used to semantically mark up data online.  Common uses are to use hCard to represent contact and address information, as well as hCalendar to represent events and calendars. Future browser versions might integrate microformats support, and if you use a browser add-on like Tails or Operator your browser can quickly find an address on Google maps or let you efficiently add items to your calendar.  It's great to see more schools use microformats, and this is progress towards the oft-mentioned semantic web.

In 2009, four law schools used at least one microformat on the home page.  In 2010, the number grew to thirteen. 

Following is a list with links to the schools using microformats, together with a note on the format being used.  Google supports microformats, they've seen the use of rich snippets growing (which includes RDFa and microformats), and as far back as 2008, Yahoo! started indexing this semantic content online. Also, some suggest that microformats help with website SEO. It will be interesting to see if more schools use this design pattern for events and addresses.  Who knows?  Sites may some day use something like hReview to mark up professor or course reviews.

Law School Home Pages Using Microformats in 2010

• American University: hCalendar
• Emory University: hCard partially implemented
• Catholic University of America: hCard
• Cornell University: hCalendar
• Michigan State University College of Law: hCard
• New York Law School: hCard
• University of California at Davis: hCard - with no street address
• University of Denver: hCard
• University of Maine: hCard - for admissions and main law school address
• University of South Dakota: hCard - for law school and main university
• University of Southern California: hCard
• University of Virginia: hCard
• Wayne State University: hCard - for law school and main university

Law School Home Pages Using Microformats in 2009:

• Catholic University of America
• University of South Dakota
• University of Texas at Austin
• Wayne State University

This entry was posted on February 1, 2011 at 11:57 AM and has received 17793 views. Print this entry.

I recently completed a ranking analysis of 195 law school home pages, entitled the "Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2009" The entire report is on SSRN and will be posted elsewhere later. This report looks at fourteen separate design elements, which were evaluated in November/December 2009.  Elements were given weighted values to equal 100 points for a perfect score.  Nobody got 100 points, but the survey reveals some interesting details about the state of law school home pages.

Here are some interesting numbers, showing how many schools out of 195 some of the elements surveyed:

• Use at least one microformat element: 4
• Define at least one Dublin Core element: 4
• Use embedded media (audio or video) playable directly from the page: 11
• Have a favicon defined: 144
• Display one or more social network badges/links: 47
• Include a picture of a smiling face: 170

The printed results will be in the Green Bag Almanac and Reader 2010, which is sent to most Green Bag subscribers. The version on SSRN is identical to the version to appear in print. This project may be repeated again next year.  If so, it will be interesting to see how much things change this year.  Suggestions for improvements are welcome, and criticism and complaints are okay too.

Read on for a list of the point values as well as a full abstract for the report. 


Element Name and Points Assigned:

• Address 10
• Search Box 10
• Cascading Stylesheet (CSS)* 10
• News Headlines 6
• News Headlines with Images 7
• Embedded Media 5
• Favicon 7
• Smiles 5
• Social Network Link 6
• Content Carousel 6
• RSS Meta Information 8
• Microformats 6
• Dublin Core 4
• Hierarchal Organization* 10

* partial points possible for these elements

Perfect Score 100

Abstract:
The website home page represents the virtual front door for any law school. It’s the place many prospective students start in the application process. Enrolled students, law school faculty and other employees often start with the home page to find classes, curricula and compensation plans. Home page content changes constantly. Deciding which home pages are good is often very subjective. Creating a ranking system for “good taste” is perhaps impossible.

The ranking report "Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2009" includes a tabulation of fourteen objective design criteria to analyze and rank 195 law school home pages. The intent was to count only objective criteria to attempt to find the best sites. All law school home pages were ranked based on a weighted analysis of these criteria. Pictures of the ten best sites are included in the report, followed by a full tabulation of all schools evaluated for the report. The goal was to include elements that make websites easier to use for sighted as well as visually-impaired users. Most elements require no special design skills, sophisticated technology or significant expenses.

This entry was posted on February 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM and has received 19713 views. Print this entry.

Internet Explorer users have a new tool to make use of Microformats even easier. The tool is called Oomph: A Microformats Toolkit, which was released as test software. Once installed, this runs as an addon in Internet Explorer to recognize pages that contain contact information or event details marked up with Microformat code. Then a nice little microformat icon shows up and you can interact with the data to save contacts to your address book or put events on your calendar.

Read more about the new tool in a blog post Microsoft and Microformats from John Allsopp, who literally wrote the book on microformats.

Here are some pictures:

You can already take advantage of microformats, even without creating them yourself. For instance, you might find events in Yahoo! Upcoming and add them directly to your calendar. Or you can search Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps and add them to your phone. There's a strange limitation to Yahoo! and Google address mark-up however. They don't include phone numbers or zip codes. I think this is by design and not a mistake. It's still pretty useful though.

Firefox users should still rely on the Operator Addon. Operator recognizes more microformats than Oomph, and there are more debugging tools for developers.

This entry was posted on November 6, 2008 at 1:21 PM and has received 30292 views. Print this entry.

There is much hype written about the semantic web, which is supposed to add context to content online, aiding computers and humans in better understanding information presented online.  One area where it's fairly easy to add content and context is by using microformats. This is a way to mark up information online so other applications can recognize events, contact details or reviews.  The mark-up is in the form of a common set of class codes that do nothing to change visual display, but can be read by computer programs recognizing this format.

We recently created a faculty events system for tracking on campus workshops and conferences.   For all events, we create a vCalendar file (used with a .vcs file extension) for import to programs like Microsoft Outlook and Entourage.  The problem is that Firefox and Internet Explorer handle .vcs files differently, forcing some users to first download the calendar file, then import it to another application. Also, .vcs files are not easy to import to services like Google Calendar.

Thankfully, we mark up all events with the hCalendar microformat, which contains all event details, even some not visible on the screen.  The easiest way to take advantage of this markup is to use the Operator Toolbar, which is a Firefox extension. This recognizes the hCalendar format, and lets visitors save items directly to Outlook, Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar and other places.  The picture here shows the Operator toolbar in action.

Jesse Rodgers, a web developer at the University of Waterloo has written about How can Microformats help Higher Education, pointing out that and their university has an events system that has all events marked up with microformats.  It looks like they have decided to forego creating downloadable calendar files (e.g. vCal or iCal) altogether. Read Rodgers' research paper on microformats in higher education for a literature review on the topic, as well as a model for implementing microformats.

This entry was posted on September 10, 2008 at 12:52 PM and has received 33014 views. Print this entry.