That pretty much covers all the basics of SMIL animation. If I've left you itching for more, then be sure to explore the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.0) Specification that's posted on the W3C site. Please dig as deeply as you can — there are all kinds of amazing animation tricks in SMIL that are waiting to be discovered.
For more on multimedia integration, you may also want to check out the SMIL 2.0 Timing and Synchronization Module. This is the portion of SMIL that RealPlayer and
Internet Explorer use for multimedia synchronization. The SMIL+HTML Language Profile outlines the use of SMIL modules in HTML documents to animate CSS elements, which is along the same lines as what we've discussed here. And for more of a high-level introduction to SMIL, check out Webmonkey Shvatz's article SMIL:
Multimedia Markup, Finally, be sure to review the CWI SMIL page from the Center for
Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands — an excellent resource.
Remember, the W3C still needs to make SMIL 2.0 an official recommendation. Hopefully, this will happen soon. Just think of all tomorrow's Web designers who will grow up without having to learn the horrors of scripting in order to make animations in HMTL.
What a world!
