A SMIL file describes a multimedia presentation.
SMIL Files
A SMIL file contains all the information necessary to describe a multimedia presentation.
SMIL files are stored with the file extension .smil
A SMIL file contains the following:
- The layout of the presentation
- The timeline of the presentation
- The source of the multimedia elements
SMIL Markup
Since SMIL is based on XML, the tags are case sensitive. All SMIL tags requires lowercase letters.
A SMIL document must start with a
tag and end with a closing tag. It may contain a element and must contain a element.
The element is used to store information about the presentation layout and other meta information.
The element contains the media elements.
How to Play a SMIL File?
To view a SMIL presentation, you will need a SMIL player installed on your computer.
Apple's Quicktime player, Windows Media Player, and RealNetworks RealPlayer support SMIL.
It would be convenient to show SMIL files natively in web browser, eliminating the requirement of a separate SMIL player or plug-in.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer has limited support for SMIL. The open-source Mozilla project is incorporating SMIL, but the progress is slow.
Note: The rest of this tutorial uses IE 5.5 or later, to demonstrate SMIL.