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Tutorial: RealSystem G2 & SMIL

The Web and its related technologies are maturing, starting to take shape and become that which we've been yearning for all this time. The caveman days of the Web are over! After all, even our great-grandfathers knew how to make simple flipbook animations, and the majority of animation on the Web has been simple multiple-frame GIFs--today's version of those ancient flipbooks. And the video up until now has been stuff that no undergraduate would even consider presenting to his professor. So why all the hubbub about the Web?

The answer to that lies in our ideas about what the Web is capable of becoming. For the last several years we've been pushing the envelope of what could be done with a Web browser further and further. The browser was not designed for multimedia, and early attempts were feeble, often reminding us of the AM radio some of us remember from childhood.

Several companies, including Microsoft and RealNetworks, have produced software "plug-ins" or helper applications for the Web browser which enable it to display both audio and video either within the browser itself, seamlessly, or within an external application which is opened by the Web browser. The quality of the audio and video is surprisingly good, and has opened the door for the creation of many innovative Web productions.

But Web developers have still been, up to this point, caught in the trap of using ASCII text (HTML) to tie together images, audio, animations, video, etc. for these "Web presentations." Enter SMIL. That doesn't mean you should start smiling now...though if you know anything about SMIL, then I know why you're smiling.

SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) is an SGML-based language that enables you to really put on a Web production. You'll be using the same tools you've always used--the same ones mentioned above: images, audio, video, animation and text. But with SMIL, you have total control over all the elements that make up the page. You can control the exact time and position each element comes into play.

How would you like to be able to tell the browser when and where to show your logo, when to play the slick intro music, when to start the video clip you've embedded in the page, when to go to another page, etc, etc, etc--all using a language that purports to be simpler and easier to learn than HTML? Get the picture now?

[Move on to the next part of the article.]

This article first appeared in May, 1998.

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