An introduction to the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language

Abstract

The Web, now a multimedia environment, can handle audio, images, text and video. However, creating TV-like multimedia presentations proves difficult. It either requires complex, timer-based programming in a scripting language (such as Javascript) or an authoring tool for multimedia presentations. To allow a broader audience to author multimedia presentations for the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium developed the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. SMIL, an easy-to-learn HTML-like language, allows the use of a text editor to write multimedia presentations. SMIL is a W3C recommendation, and several implementations are available. This article explains how to write a multimedia presentation in SMIL.