The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) 2.0 specification as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Web authors are in search of ways to deliver rich content, including video, audio, and text, and to synchronize those components as they see fit. It’s no longer simply television on the Web that end users are seeking; people are looking for information and experiences that take full advantage of the Web’s technical capabilities – interoperability, flexibility, device choice, and searchability. With SMIL 2.0, producing reusable audio-visual presentations is easy; as SMIL 2.0 is an XML application, one may use a simple text editor to create engaging multimedia experiences for the Web. SMIL allows the author to incorporate a wide range of data (audio, video, or text), which may be locally or remotely stored. SMIL 2.0 has been produced as a set of modules which, individually or in combinations, may meet the needs of a Web author, and build on the guiding principles of interoperability at the core of W3C work. In addition to full incorporation of the successful SMIL 1.0 features, SMIL 2.0 Modules provide functionalities including animation; content control; layout; linking; media objects; metainformation; structure; timing and synchronization; time manipulations; and transition effects. This gives authors the ability to create sophisticated animation, event-based interaction with a presentation, and graceful transition effects based on nearly 100 predefined options. Because a SMIL presentation is written as a text file, it can include metadata components, which make a SMIL presentation searchable. www.w3.org/