Microformats are used to make Web documents smarter (HTML, XHTML, RSS, ATOM, BLOGS, XML). They don't affect how your documents are rendered by a browser. But they have a huge (positive) impact on the ability of Web applications/tools to collect, understand, and process the information in your Web pages.
This microformats cheat sheet lists the properties by format and also lists each format and the hierarchy. This includes elemental microformats, compound microformats and some of the standard design patterns used.
... approach to avoid the hacks in some compound microformats by virtue of the structure of the Web. XML, and other natural data representation technologies such as JSON, are just as viable as many of...