A SMIL practice

SMIL represents Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language recommended by W3C. It is one of the XML applied domains which can control multiple images, videos, sounds, and texts. It is theoretically known as easy to develop, fairly accessible, and web native while it is not accessible in most common environment, only supported partly by a few web agents or players.

I developed a simple SMIL file for practice purpose. I just started to learn its syntax by myself and I am still far from making it highly compatible, standard-compliant, or accessible. I tested this first SMIL presentation with RealOne player and Ambulant Player 1.8. Ambulant Player is the only player who supports SMIL version 2.1 and RealOne supports 2.0 while Apple's QuickTime supports 1.0. Although Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher supports XHTML+SMIL, this combination does not work on other browsers.

Therefore, I tried to embed the SMIL file in my web page using standard <object> HTML element with type="application/smil+xml" attribute but failed because I could not find any browser which supports this MIME type automatically. I had no choice but to include non-standard deprecated <embed> element for non-Internet Explorer browsers with RealPlayer ActiveX for Internet Explorer.

Download the SMIL presentation file: October Trip to Haneul Park with CMHV Befrienders(2007)

Any feedback including comments, suggestions, or critiques for more accessible SMIL and more compatible SMIL embedding in a web page would be welcomed.

The presentation shows a series of photos taken at Haneul Park with my community members in CMHV paralleled with a background musical piece which was composed by me long time ago.