HCalendar
hCalendar is a microformat standard for displaying a semantic (X)HTML representation of iCalendar-format calendar information about an event, on web pages, using HTML classes and rel attributes.
It allows parsing tools to extract the details of the event, and display them using some other website, index or search them, or to load them into a calendar or diary program, for instance. Multiple instances can be displayed as timelines.
Example
Consider this semi-fictional example:
The English Wikipedia was launched
on 15 January 2001 with a party from
2-4pm at
Jimmy Wales' house
.
The HTML mark-up might be:
The English Wikipedia was launched
on 15 January 2001 with a party from
2-4pm at
Jimmy Wales' house
hCalendar mark-up may be added using
span HTML elements and the classes vevent, summary, dtstart, dtend, location and url:
The English Wikipedia was launched
on 15 January 2001 with a party from
2pm-
4pm at
Jimmy Wales' house
Note the use of the
abbr element to contain the machine readable, ISO8601, date-time format for the start and end times.Accessibility concerns
Concerns have been expressed that, where it occurs, the use of theabbr element in the above manner causes accessibility problems, not least for users of screen readers and aural browsers. The newer microformat therefore uses the HTML5 element time instead:Geo
The Geo microformat is a part of the hCalendar specification, and is often used to include the coordinates of the event's location within an hCalendar.Attributes
For a full list of attributes, see the .Users
Notable organisations and other websites using hCalendar include:- Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall
- The Opera web browser website
- The Radio Times
- The University of Bath
- The University of Washington
- Upcoming.org
- Wikipedia
- Yahoo!, on Yahoo! Local