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.