W3C Releases Draft of Multimedia Integration Language

Computergram International, August 4, 1999

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released the first public working draft of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL). The draft, known as SMIL Boston, builds on the 1998 W3C SMIL Recommendation. It adds reusable modules, generic animation, interactivity and TV integration, all written in extensible markup language (XML). SMIL simplifies the process of writing "TV-like" multimedia for the web to the point where such content can be authored inside a text editor.

As innocuous as it sounds, the specification has been described as one of the most contentious ever considered by the W3C. SMIL's critics say it overlaps and even conflicts with existing standards, including HTML 4.0, Dynamic HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and in particular, the Document Object Model (DOM). This time last year, Microsoft Corp, which had been a founding member of the group that developed the specification, withdrew its support for SMIL because of potential conflicts with DOM.