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SMIL Introduction

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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:

  • HTML
  • XHTML
  • XML
  • XML namespaces

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home Page.


What Is SMIL?

  • SMIL stands for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
  • SMIL is pronounced "smile"
  • SMIL is a language for describing audiovisual presentations
  • SMIL is easy to learn and understand
  • SMIL is an HTML-like language
  • SMIL is written in XML
  • SMIL presentations can be written using a text-editor
  • SMIL is a W3C recommendation

A Simplified SMIL Example

<smil>
  <body>
    <seq repeatCount="indefinite">
      <img src="image1.jpg" dur="3s" />
      <img src="image2.jpg" dur="3s" />
    </seq>
  </body>
</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 <smil></smil> tags defines the SMIL document. A <body> element defines the body of the presentation. A <seq> element defines a sequence to display. The repeatCount attribute defines an indefinite loop. Each <img> element has a src attribute to define the image source and a dur attribute to define the duration of the display.


What Can SMIL Do?

  • SMIL can be used to create Internet or Intranet presentations
  • SMIL can be used to create slide-show presentations
  • SMIL has been described as the Internet answer to PowerPoint
  • SMIL presentations can display multiple file types (text, video, audio...)
  • SMIL presentations can display multiple files at the same time
  • SMIL presentations can display files from multiple web servers
  • SMIL presentations can contain links to other SMIL presentations
  • SMIL presentations can contain control buttons (stop, start, next, ...)
  • SMIL has functions for defining sequences and duration of elements
  • SMIL has functions for defining position and visibility of elements

SMIL is a W3C Recommendation

W3C has been developing SMIL since 1997, as a language for choreographing multimedia presentations where audio, video, text and graphics are combined in real-time.

SMIL became a W3C Recommendation 15. June 1998.

To read more about the SMIL activities at W3C, please read our W3C tutorial.


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