September 8, 2000 - The Benefits of HTML+TIME | WebReference

September 8, 2000 - The Benefits of HTML+TIME

Yehuda Shiran September 8, 2000
The Benefits of HTML+TIME
Tips: September 2000

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

One of the major thrusts of Internet Explorer 5.5 is HTML+TIME. HTML+TIME (Timed Interactive Multimedia Extension), first released in Internet Explorer 5, adds timing and synchronization between HTML elements. HTML+TIME technology allows you to add images, video, and sounds to an HTML page, and synchronize them with HTML text elements along a specified timeline. It allows you to specify beginning and duration times, sequencing and parallelism of element display, and repetition of sequences.

The major benefit of HTML+TIME is that you can synchronize between a wide array of element types. Using HTML+TIME, you can create Web presentations with synchronized text, images, audio, video, and streaming media. Your presentations can be both timed and interactive. The timing capability is achieved by HTML+TIME's ability to sequence events according to the programmed schedule. The interactivity capability stems from HTML+TIME's support of events and event handling.

Another advantage of HTML+TIME is its ease of use. In order to add timing effects to your page, all you need to do is add HTML+TIME attributes to existing HTML elements. Without HTML+TIME specifications, every element appears immediately when the page loads, and remains displayed indefinitely. HTML+TIME attributes let you specify when an element appears, how long it stays, and how other elements are affected. In addition to the attributes, you can use the AUDIO or VIDEO element to specify when the media should start, stop, and how many times it should repeat. These media elements have been enhanced to become XML-based, supporting HTML+TIME methods and properties.

You can apply HTML+TIME attributes to a group of HTML elements. In this way, you can manipulate multiple elements at once. You can instruct a group to appear at a certain time, stay for given period, and repeat itself for a specified number of times. You can even specify a relationship between members of a group. They can appear and disappear sequentially on the page, or they can do it independently of each other.

You can take advantage of HTML+TIME with or without scripting knowledge. For those (few?) of you that like to avoid scripting, you can just add HTML+TIME attributes to your favorite HTML elements, thus making your pages more dynamic. However, HTML+TIME supports a complete object model that extends the existing DHTML Object Model. This model provides a complete set of properties, methods, and events to add even more interactive features to your Web site.

Learn more about HTML+TIME in Column 67, Introduction to HTML+TIME.