Open Graph namespace declaration: HTML with XMLNS or head prefix?
I have seen conflicting information on how to best implement Open Graph namespaces. Specifically, the Open Graph website uses a few different methods, and the Facebook Open Graph examples use other methods.
Open Graph website example (using HTML prefix attribute):
<html prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#">
Open Graph website source code (using HTML XMLNS attribute):
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#">
Facebook Open Graph documentation (using HEAD prefix attribute):
<head prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns# fb: http://ogp.me/ns/fb#">
Facebook Open Graph documentation #2 (using HTML XMLNS attribute):
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#"
xmlns:fb="https://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
What is the recommended method or does it not even matter?
They are all equivalent and will all work.
Use prefix as it is the new recommended way and is fewer characters.
I'll get all our documentation updated to prefix.
I tried following @Paul Tarjan's answer of using prefix in the head. However I got some Internet Explorer 8 issue. So in the end I still use the xmlns way for fb namespace:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html xmlns:fb="http://ogp.me/ns/fb#">
<head prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns# object: http://ogp.me/ns/object#">
It doesn't even matter. RDFa Core Initial Context recognizes og as a widely used vocabulary prefix:
RDFa users can use these prefixes without having the obligation of defining the prefixes in the HTML code. The same list of prefixes have also been defined for JSON-LD as a JSON-LD Context at the URI
http://www.w3.org/2013/json-ld-context/rdfa11; JSON-LD users can use the@contextkey with that URI as a shorthand to use the same prefixes.
Emphasis added for clarity.
Therefore, you do not need to add a namespace to your HTML documents. More information here.