In a recent code review on the Ubiquity XForms project, the question of whether to test for an element by name or properties came up. In this post we look at the benefits that can be had from using duck-typing as a way to manage objects' functionality, rather than the more usual hierarchical solutions.

In this post I look at how RDFa and other techniques to add extra information to documents evolved around the same time as Microformats, as part of the work at the W3C on the next generation of web languages. Whilst the traditional approach taken to language design at the W3C -- and now used in HTML5 -- seeks to anticipate authors' every needs, the RDFa approach resulted from a focus on clearly defined extension points that give authors control.

This presentation by Mark Birbeck was given at the Kings of Code conference.

Something which was part of the early design concepts from the XHTML Role Attribute Module, which has got a little lost, is that elements from any language can provide a handy source of role values too.

The XHTML Role Attribute Module is a W3C Working Draft, which provides a single attribute to be used in documents to indicate the purpose an element.