From: Larry Bouthillier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: dhtml vs <smil>?
I think that there's a misconception in your understanding of SMIL. SMIL is
not proprietary, but a W3C standard supported by many vendors, including
RealNetworks, Apple, and (in a future release of IE) Microsoft. RealNetworks
happens to have the most mature player, and that with the highest penetration,
but there are others and they are growing.
Secondly, while it is possible to do all that timing stuff using complex
client-side scripting, the capabilities built into SMIL are extremely simple
to create, modify, and edit. Furthermore, client-side scripting using DHTML
is extremely browser- OS-, and browser version-dependent. Even different
point-release versions of the same browser will behave differently on many
scripts; or the same browser will behave differently on the Mac vs. Windows;
or on Win95 vs. Win98. As such, it's very fragile, causes the browser to be
unstable, and the reliability of the application across a diverse user
population is very low.
On the other hand, SMIL works well and allows very sophisticated effects
without complex programming. In some cases, you can combine a SMIL
presentation embedded in a page with some very SIMPLE scripting (read: works
on virtually all browsers and all platforms) to create an exceptional product
using the best of both worlds.
I often create SMIL that uses MPEG1 for the video -- nothing proprietary at
all. I happily play it with RealPlayer from a RealServer, but if I ever
needed to switch, I could just as easily run it using QuickTime 4.1 or,
(presumably, if MS sticks to the standard) IE5.5 and WMP.
Larry
RealForum wrote:
> From: "Rasmus Wolff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: dhtml vs <smil>?
>
> Hi,
>
> Could anybody explain to me the advantage of using <smil> vs. =
> dhtml/layers?
>
> It seems that most of the stuff (timing events, integrating video/audio) =
> can be done in dhtml also? And, I guess, a lot more.
>
> <smil> appears to be a proprietary format that works only with =
> real-streaming-media (through the realplayer). On our site we wish to =
> offer both RealVideo and WindowsMediaPlayer files to the user, and let =
> him/her choose which is preferred. With DHTML we can reuse most of the =
> code for both wmp and real, showing the video embedded in the page.
>
> But what are the disadvantages of this compared to smil?
>
> Thanks for any comments!
>
> Best regards,
> Rasmus Wolff
> - working for a site delivering koncert-recordings (on-demand and live)
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