RE: Status of SMIL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
>
> > One thing that still annoys me is that, although QT
> > understands SMIL just fine, the player does not associate
> > itself automatically with the .sml and .smil extensions,
> > meaning that users with QT need to explicitly open the
> > player, then force it to open the SMIL file...rather convoluted.
>
> This is up to the Windows user to set on their machine, and yes, it is a
> pain.  The best way around this is to create a ref movie using a free app
> called MakeRefMovie
> (http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/).
> This creates
> a QT .mov that has sole purpose -- to tell the QT player to open another
> file (in this case, a SMIL file).  Works every time.
>
> > Another way to do it would be to embed a QT object in a web
> > page and forcing the file to be displayed via Quicktime that
> > way. (unless this has changed now, haven't looked at the
> > issue in the last few months, admittedly).
>
> Even doing this doesn't necessarily guarantee that Real won't try to
> commandeer the playback of the file.  There is a qtsrc attribute
> that can be
> used, but this will make the pages invalid XHTML.
>
> AWK

These technicalities make it almost unusable for the average user.  When
they install a player they expect it to be able to support and play media it
says it supports without problem.

Do you think we are ever going to see SMIL native in user agents like SVG is
supposed to be (upcoming in Mozilla)?

Thanks
Geoff

Received on Wednesday, 23 June 2004 17:34:13 UTC