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SMIL Tutorial
SMIL is a language for describing audiovisual presentations.
This tutorial shows you how to create web-based multimedia presentations which integrate audio, video, images, text or any other media type. SMIL Example |
#2
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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:
What Is 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 What Can SMIL Do?
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#3
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SMIL Files
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:
Since SMIL is based on XML, the tags are case sensitive. All SMIL tags requires lowercase letters. A SMIL document must start with a 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. |
#4
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SMIL in HTML
Internet Explorer can run SMIL presentations inside HTML files.
Running SMIL in IE SMIL elements can be inserted into HTML files in Internet Explorer 5.5 or later. To use SMIL elements in your HTML pages, you must add a "time" namespace to recognize the elements. To use SMIL attributes, you must define a "time" class. Here is how to do it:
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#5
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Xhtml+smil
Browsers will treat audio and video as easy as old browsers treat text and images.
HTML+TIME In the previous chapter you saw Internet Explorer could display SMIL elements in HTML. The history behind this is shortly as follows: June 1998: SMIL 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation. September 1998: Microsoft, Macromedia, Compaq/Digital and Digital Renaissance submitted HTML+TIME to W3C as a proposal for adding SMIL 1.0 timing and synchronization support to HTML. The HTML+TIME proposal describes very much the support for SMIL that can be found in IE 5.5. XHTML+SMIL August 2001: SMIL 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation. XHTML+SMIL became a separate Working Draft, based on the ideas of HTML+TIME. The XHTML+SMIL Working Draft describes very much the support for SMIL that can be found in IE 6.0. What is Happening Here? SMIL is currently in a very interesting development process. SMIL 1.0 defined a simple way to create visual media presentations and how to play them. HTML+TIME added SMIL 1.0 abilities to nearly all HTML elements. SMIL 2.0 added interactivity and transitions to SMIL 1.0. XHTML+SMIL adds SMIL 2.0 abilities to nearly all XHTML elements. XHTML+SMIL has a great potential for taking the web to the next level, and let browsers treat audio and video like "old" browsers treated text and images. Why XHTML+SMIL? Is it not obvious? To run a SMIL presentation today, you'll need a SMIL player. Would it not be nicer if you could run SMIL directly in your browser? SMIL defines a set of multimedia elements. Each of these elements can be given layout, timing, and transition attributes and rules. Would it not be nicer if you could add these attributes and rules to all your HTML elements? |