From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)

SMIL Introduction

SMIL is an easy-to-learn 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 XML based, easy to understand, 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.