SMIL 2.0 part 1: overview, concepts, and structure

The World Wide Web Consortium´s Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language format for encoding multimedia presentations for delivery over the Web is a little-known but widely used standard. First released in mid-1998, SMIL has been installed on approximately 200,000,000 desktops worldwide, primarily because of its adoption in RealPlayer G2, Quicktime 4.1, and Internet Explorer 5.5. In August 2001, the W3C released a significant update with SMIL 2.0. In a two-part report on SMIL 2.0, the author will discuss the basics of SMIL 2.0 and compare its features with other formats. This article will focus on SMIL´s basic concepts and structure. Part two, in the January-March 2002 issue, will look at detailed examples of SMIL 2.0, covering both simple and complex examples. It´ll also contrast the facilities in SMIL 2.0 and MPEG-4