Page 2 —
Learning the Basics
How about we start out with a quick primer and a couple of demonstration pages? Remember: You'll need Internet Explorer 5.5 (with animations turned ON) to see the following examples. You probably have animations on in your browser already — if you can see animated GIFs, you have animations on. In case you don't, go to Tools -> Options on the IE 5.5 menu, and then to the Advanced tab. Under the Multimedia section, make sure you have Play Animations enabled (the box should have a check in it).
Before you run off and start SMILing, you need a skeleton which sets up IE to support it. This declaration must appear within the <head> portion of your HTML+SMIL document:
<html xmlns:smil="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:time">
<head>
<style>
smil\:* { behavior:url(#default#time2) }
time:* { behavior:url(#default#time2) }
</style>
</head>
If you study some of Microsoft's SMIL articles, the code samples they provide all include this ...
<?IMPORT namespace="t" implementation="#default#time2">
... in the head block, but it is not required. I don't use it because it doesn't seem to be xHTML/XSL friendly — when I run it through a validator, it returns an error. You can include it if you wish, but remember to change the namespace="t" to namespace='smil' for the examples here. If and when SMIL is adopted by other browsers, it will probably look like the standards-compliant namespace='smil' declaration.
Here are some easy examples that will each open in a separate window. Play with them, then take a look at the code I've provided and view the source to see how the skeleton header fits in.
After you've had your fun clicking and reading about my oh-so-stellar SMIL creations, move on to the next page where we'll discuss the SMIL timeline.
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