Microformats and the Operator plugin

The Tagzania userscript for the Operator plugin that we present at this page is the work of Tony Tones Farndon, a geo-hacker friend of Tagzania.

If you are familiar with microformats, and you have Operator, install our userscript: tagzania_userscript_8_version.js It will let you see in Tagzania microformated data, including postal addresses that will be geocoded. If you want to know more, go on.

Microformats and geo

Microformats are a way in which information present in web pages gets standardized. There are several microformats, for personal and businnes contact information and else. A couple of formats is related to location: adr (addresses) and geo (geographic position at large).

Tagzania is already compatible with microformats: every location, every item, has it's position microformatted according to the geo standard. But there's another way in which microformats and Tagzania interact: the Tagzania userscript for the Operator Firegox addon. Sounds confusing? We'll try to put it plainly:

So, the Operator is installed as a bar in your Firefox browser. In that bar, there are several icons representing different microformats, and if information is detected, numbers appear in the bar, with displayable options. For contact data, you can use the pulldown menu to store or import those contacts to a variery of tools, for instance.

Now, if we add the Tagzania userscript to Operator, the address and geo icons of the bar, when active, show Tagzania options in the pulldown menus. Look at this screenshot.

Three addresses have been detected by Operator (as well as 3 hCard contact information sets and 6 calendar entries or events). The pulldown menu of the adr icon shows the options available for each of the addresses: there are several options there, two from Tagzania, you can see places that are near that place, or post that location to Tagzania.

This other example below shows a variery of microformatted data detected by Operator, and one geo set, with latitude and longitude info, that you can reuse in Tagzania.

How-to

To install Operator, go to and install version 0.8 from here (that's the one we've tested with the Tagzania userscript). Then, in the options that appear at the right end of the bar, activate the Data formats mode (it's better that way), as shown in this screenshot:

Now, to install the Tagzania userscript. Download this file to your computer's desktop:

Unzip the file, and you'll get a little javascript file: tagzania_userscript_8_version.js

Now go to Firefox, choose Addons in the Tools menu. Find the Operator piece, and choose Options. Of the various tabs offered, choose the Userscript one, and add a new Userscript there, that file tagzania_userscript_8_version.js that you downloaded to your desktop. Restart Firefox and it's done.

The Tagzania version of Operator locates addresses using the Google Maps API geocoding option, but also the Yahoo Pipes geocoding service. This last service lets us detect UK addresses when using Operator, an option not available in the current Tagzania posting interface (available for many countries, but not for the UK, so far). Accuracy of address detection may vary, depending on how the address has been microformatted.

Highlighted addresses

There's another interesting thing to do with Operator: look at screenshot above showing the options window. Activate the Highlight Microformats checkbox, and while you browse pages, microformatted items will be made visible, as this address here:

Right-clicking the mouse above that, some options will appear, and in this case, as it is an adr or address element, the Operator Tagzania options will let you geocode and save that thing.

This screenshot shows some Basque functions in Firefox, but don't worry, Operator or Tagzania's userscript won't change your preferences, it will just add some options: in this case, they were added to a Basque version of Firefox, and it worked for our screenshot.