The trick.... is to make sure that each limited mechanical part of the Web, each application, is within itself composed of simple parts that will never get too powerful.
—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving The Web
Microformats Principles
solve a specific problem
simple as possible
evolutionary improvements
humans first, machines second
presentable and parsable
adapt to current behaviors
reuse from widely adopted standards
semantic (X)HTML, schemas from interoperable RFCs
...if I had insisted everyone use HTTP, this would also have been against the principle of minimal constraint. ... the Web would come as a set of ideas that could be adopted individually in combination with existing or future parts.
