Has anyone learned To SMILe?

Looked at this 2? years ago and it didn't make me

[richardb]

"SMILe, or the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a relatively new way to create interactive multimedia presentations. It allows you to synchronize a variety of graphical and sound files in several different formats. SMILe is based on XML and it's even been approved by the W3C. Icarus's article will step you through the basics including tag definitions, basic layout, and lots of links to help you with advanced questions."

F.I. [devshed.com...]

Has anyone spent any time on it, if so what did you think? Personally I'm quite happy using Flash -- but would like to hear other opinions.

Rich

[BlobFisk]

A couple of years ago I did a little work with SMIL, while working on the site for a large regional radio station. I was using it mainly for integrating our Real live feed with images and other material of the type you mentioned.

What I did wasn't particularly high-level stuff, but all-in-all I liked it and it produces nice looking, well integrated multimedia content.

[richardb]

Thanks for that BlobFisk

What advantages does it have over Flash (apart from from a non user of Flash POV)?

Thanks for the feedback

Rich

[BlobFisk]

Well, I always found that the main advantage was the ability to provide live streaming audiovisual feeds in an interface designed and developed by you. It is hard to compare it and Flash, but for what I used it for, it's advantage was purely on the side of the live stream integration.

I've only ever used it with Real streams, but I believe that it also has Quicktime and IE6 support also. The W3C SMiL pages are here [w3.org], and a dedicated SMiL page is here [smw.internet.com].