SMIL Introduction
SMIL is an HTML-like language for describing audiovisual presentations.
What You Should Already Know
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:
- HTML
- XHTML
- XML
- XML namespaces
If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home Page.
What Is SMIL?
- SMIL stands for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
- SMIL is pronounced "smile"
- SMIL is a language for describing audiovisual presentations
- SMIL is easy to learn and understand
- SMIL is an HTML-like language
- SMIL is written in XML
- SMIL presentations can be written using a text-editor
- SMIL is a W3C recommendation
A Simplified SMIL Example
<smil>
<body>
<seq repeatCount="indefinite">
<img src="image1.jpg" dur="3s" />
<img src="image2.jpg" dur="3s" />
</seq>
</body>
</smil> |
From the example above you can see that SMIL is an HTML-like language that can be written using a simple text-editor.
The <smil></smil> tags defines the SMIL document. A <body> element defines the
body of the presentation. A <seq> element defines a sequence to display. The
repeatCount attribute defines an indefinite loop. Each <img>
element has a src attribute to define the image source and a dur attribute to
define the duration of the display.
What Can SMIL Do?
- SMIL can be used to create Internet or Intranet presentations
- SMIL can be used to create slide-show presentations
- SMIL has been described as the Internet answer to PowerPoint
- SMIL presentations can display multiple file types (text, video, audio...)
- SMIL presentations can display multiple files at the same time
- SMIL presentations can display files from multiple web servers
- SMIL presentations can contain links to other SMIL presentations
- SMIL presentations can contain control buttons (stop, start, next, ...)
- SMIL has functions for defining sequences and duration of elements
- SMIL has functions for defining position and visibility of elements
SMIL is a W3C Recommendation
W3C has been developing SMIL since 1997, as a language for choreographing multimedia presentations where audio,
video, text and graphics are combined in real-time.
SMIL became a W3C Recommendation 15. June 1998.
To read more about the SMIL activities at W3C, please read our W3C tutorial.
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