SMIL
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language

SMIL is a W3C standard similar to HTML. It is a tag-language, one of many in the XML family. Different from HTML, it is case-sensitive, and pretty much everything should be lower case!

SMIL Features

SMIL is used to integrate different kinds of media into a coherent time-based presentation. All media have to be created separately — SMIL just controls their playback! Its tasks can be split into the following areas:

• layout: definition of areas for video, images, text
• source media: the building blocks for the presentation
• timing: start/end or duration for each media clip
• interactivity: hyperlinks, anchors, imagemaps
• switches: select streams depending on external factors

Creating SMIL

SMIL is a tag-based language similar to HTML, so you can write it with a plain text editor such as Windows Notepad . Better are HTML tag-editors that allow you to specify your own set of tags, such as Notetab Pro, Macromedia Homesite, or Arachnophilia. Having a set of tags predefined speeds up development of SMIL materials dramatically if you do this often.

There are a few visual editors for SMIL, which allow dragging rectangles to specify the layout-regions visually. They also include a timeline tool where you can indicate what stream should play at which time in the overall presentation.

• Easy to use: Fluition
• Structure-oriented: Oratrix GRiNS

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