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Now that you know what VRML is, you probably don’t need to know much more about it. If you’re curious, more information is available at The Web Developer’s Virtual Library:

http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/VRML/

SVG and SMIL

In the absence of finalized multimedia standards for the Web, plug-ins were developed that enabled websites to offer streaming video, animated vector graphics, music tracks, and the like. We are about to look at those very plug-ins. But first, let us pause to consider a recent development.

Over the past couple of years, W3C recommendations have emerged to suggest standardized ways of doing what proprietary plug-ins already do so well. One of these is SMIL, the W3C recommendation for multimedia; the other is SVG, intended to deliver vector graphics such as those already used in Flash (but with some essential differences from Flash).

What’s up with these two new standards, and why do they matter?

SMIL (through your fear and sorrow)

SMIL (http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/) stands for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language and is pronounced, “smile.” Isn’t that cute? Oh, shut up.

SMIL is an easy-to-learn, HTML-like language for creating “TV-like multimedia presentations such as training courses on the Web,” according to the W3C. The current SMIL recommendation is 1.0, and you can read all about it at the W3C address just cited and at another one we’ll mention later. This is our way of avoiding adding another 50 pages to this book.

Aside from the fact that three Internet heavies (Real, Apple, and Adobe) are throwing their weight behind SMIL, why should you care about any of this? Let’s see.

Harnessing media, helping users

SMIL packs accessibility features (http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL-access/), including alternative text content that can be made available to Braille readers. Such content will also enable search engines to index multimedia web content authored in SMIL.

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In English: slap a QuickTime video on your site and search engines such as Google or Altavista could care less. But add a carefully authored SMIL presentation to your site, and speeches made by the characters in your video could show up in Google and Altavista’s search results.

The educational implications are enormous. A student researching Hamlet’s soliloquy could find a SMIL-authored video of Sir Laurence Olivier performing it. The Web’s potential as the world’s library could suddenly become much richer.

The commercial implications ain’t bad, either. A buyer searching for widgets could find your client’s digitized promotional video on the subject. Existing multimedia formats obviously do not offer these advantages.

Lest you think SMIL is a completely wacky new technology, it is, in fact, simply a markup language that works with existing technologies like QuickTime and Real digital video and audio. What SMIL does is bring the traditional benefits of the Web (searching, finding, bookmarking) to nontext content. That is profound.

More reasons to SMIL

Other cool things you can do with SMIL:

1.With a single link, you can deliver audio to dialup users and video to broadband users. None of that “click here for audio, click here for video” junk.

2.Deliver different language versions of clips depending on a user’s system-language setting.

3.Use back-end technologies to deliver multimedia content on the fly. No need for expensive, proprietary programs with steep learning curves. (SVG delivers similar benefits.)

…All with a few simple tags.

Author! Author!

Among the currently available Web tools and plug-ins that support SMIL are Apple QuickTime 4.1 (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/) and the unfortunately named RealSlideshow authoring tool by the makers of

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the RealPlayer (http://proforma.real.com/rn/tools/slideshow/index.html?). Adobe is presently developing a SMIL extension for its GoLive WYSIWYG tool, which should simplify the creation of SMIL content and might help accelerate the standard’s adoption.

RealSystem’s support for SMIL has been solid since 1998. Given the number of RealPlayers out there, SMIL can already reach almost as many web users as Flash does. Not that SMIL and Flash are enemies. SMIL is often used to integrate Flash content into the QuickTime and RealPlayers, and Flash 5 exports SMIL for use in RealSystem.

SMILsoftware’s Flution 1.5 (http://www.smilsoftware.com/) for Windows can streamline the SMIL creation process. Tom Wlodkowksy’s free Media Access Generator (MAGpie) for Windows (http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/ pages/ncam/webaccess/magpie/) adds accessibility features such as closed-captioning to SMIL. For a more detailed description of the goals of the SMIL language, see the W3C Activity Statement (http://www.w3.org/ AudioVideo/Activity.html) on Synchronized Multimedia. For practical advice on putting SMIL to work, see Jim Heid’s old-but-good tutorial at Macworld, SMIL: Markup for Multimedia (http://macworld.zdnet.com/ 2000/02/create/markupmultimedia.html).

SVG for You and Me

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a W3C standard in progress. As of this writing, the W3C describes its initial SVG activities as “currently nearing completion” (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8). Though SVG produces vector graphics, it is a markup language. In fact, it is an application of XML, the super-meta-markup language we’ve mentioned throughout this book.

Like Flash vector graphics, SVG vector graphics can fill an entire screen with artwork while using very little bandwidth. Also like Flash, SVG can be animated via scripting. You’ll find examples of this at Adobe’s SVG site, which we’ll discuss in a moment (see Figures 12.5 and 12.6).

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Figure 12.5

The Battlebots logo in SVG. At the user’s discretion, the image can be enlarged again and again.

Figure 12.6

Vector artwork maintains quality at the highest magnifications while keeping bandwidth expenditure at a minimum (http:// www.adobe.com/).

No matter its graphic appearance, SVG remains text. To understand the implications of that fact, let’s contrast SVG with our present production techniques. We’ll use an example that’s close to every designer’s heart: the client’s logo.