SMIL State: an architecture and implementation for adaptive time-based web applications

In this paper we examine adaptive time-based web applications (or presentations). These are interactive presentations where time dictates which parts of the application are presented (providing the major structuring paradigm), and that require interactivity and other dynamic adaptation. We investigate the current technologies available to create such presentations and their shortcomings, and suggest a mechanism for addressing these shortcomings. This mechanism, SMIL State, can be used to add user-defined state to declarative time-based languages such as SMIL or SVG animation, thereby enabling the author to create control flows that are difficult to realize within the temporal containment model of the host languages. In addition, SMIL State can be used as a bridging mechanism between languages, enabling easy integration of external components into the web application. Finally, SMIL State enables richer expressions for content control. This paper defines SMIL State in terms of an introductory example, followed by a detailed specification of the State model. Next, the implementation of this model is discussed. We conclude with a set of potential use cases, including dynamic content adaptation and delayed insertion of custom content such as advertisements. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

A SMIL-Based Catalog Presentation System in Electronic Commerce

Web-based catalog presentations play the key-enabling role in E-commerce in recent years. Existing catalog systems often acquire proprietary platforms, cannot deal with TV-like media objects, or consume network bandwidth inefficiently. With the emergence of advanced technologies of Web and multimedia, such hurdles can be removed. The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), proposed by W3C allows Web designers to design complicated and vivid multimedia presentations in a declarative manner. These presentations are then rendered on a general-purpose browser by a SMIL player. Since the SMIL specification is quite new to the Internet and E-commerce societies, the functionality and applications of players is limited. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture based on Java JMF technology for tackling with such constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed system is validated through an experiment on product catalog presentations

The Use of SMIL: Multimedia Research Currently Applied on a Global Scale

This paper describes the current use of the multimedia standard SMIL. SMIL features that relate to active areas of multimedia research are discussed. SMIL current implementation in existing browsers is described. Examples from the Web of SMIL applications representing different types of multimedia are presented. These discussions together provide an overview of how SMIL currently addresses the needs of multimedia distributed on the Web

Analysis and design of a subtitling system for ambient intelligence environments

The development of ubiquitous applications for ambient intelligence environments needs to also take into account some usability and accessibility issues in order to ensure a proper user experience and to overcome the existing content access barriers. A proper access to video subtitles, for instance, is not always available due to the technical limitations of traditional video packaging, transmission and presentation. New Web standards enable more featured applications with better multi-platform definition, so they are suitable for building ubiquitous applications for ambient intelligence environments. This work presents a video subtitling system that enables the customization and adaptation of subtitles. The benefits of Web applications compared with device-specific native applications for building the solution as well as its current platform support are analyzed. Finally, three different application use cases are presented

Visualization of Accessible Multimedia Content in Web Pages

Multimedia content still presented on the web sites. The visualization of multimedia content by the users with disabilities, those that usually use screen readers, is extremely difficult. With the onset of the audio sequence of multimedia presentation it is difficult for users with visual impairs to listen the audio component of presentation and the audio version of the screen readers too, because the two audio streams cannot be controlled using only one volume control. Therefore, because of the difficulties to control the available audio streams and because of the difficulties to access the control buttons by people with disabilities, the multimedia content is often inaccessible for users with visual problems. More than this, the use of dynamic users’ interfaces is a critical problem because the screen-readers cannot detect the dynamics in content changes. The current paper presents some solutions for multimedia content production and distribution in distributed multimedia web presentations.Accessible multimedia content, Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange

Video on the Web: Experiences from SMIL and from the Ambulant Annotator

Since the arrival of YouTube on the desktop, video has entered its second lifetime on the Web. The main difference between this incarnation of video and its predecessors is at the source: where first generation video was about repurposing content, the YouTube generation is all about usergenerated content and few-to-few (rather than one-to-many) sharing. The fact that video is not new to the Web is a great advantage. It means that much of the work from the past can be reused and updated to meet current needs. This paper provides an overview of how video (and audio) have been processed on the Web using SMIL. It also provides a discussion of some extensions to SMIL functionality that show how video is processed as a first-class object in a video interaction framework within the Ambulant Annotator

Using multimedia to enhance the accessibility of the learning environment for disabled students: reflections from the Skills for Access project

As educators' awareness of their responsibilities towards ensuring the accessibility of the learning environment to disabled students increases, significant debate surrounds the implications of accessibility requirements on educational multimedia. There would appear to be widespread concern that the fundamental principles of creating accessible web‐based materials seem at odds with the creative and innovative use of multimedia to support learning and teaching, as well as concerns over the time and cost of providing accessibility features that can hold back resource development and application. Yet, effective use of multimedia offers a way of enhancing the accessibility of the learning environment for many groups of disabled students. Using the development of ‘Skills for Access’, a web resource supporting the dual aims of creating optimally accessible multimedia for learning, as an example, the attitudinal, practical and technical challenges facing the effective use of multimedia as an accessibility aid in a learning environment will be explored. Reasons why a holistic approach to accessibility may be the most effective in ensuring that multimedia reaches its full potential in enabling and supporting students in learning, regardless of any disability they may have, will be outlined and discussed

Synchronizing Web Documents with Style

In this paper we report on our efforts to define a set of document extensions to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that allow for structured timing and synchronization of elements within a Web page. Our work considers the scenario in which the temporal structure can be decoupled from the content of the Web page in a similar way that CSS does with the layout, colors and fonts. Based on the SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) temporal model we propose CSS document extensions and discuss the design and implementation of a proof of concept that realizes our contributions. As HTML5 seems to move away from technologies like Flash and XML (eXtensible Markup Language), we believe our approach provides a flexible declarative solution to specify rich media experiences that is more aligned with current Web practices