Multimedia is important not for what information it presents, but how it presents it. Text as a single medium provides most of the information we need from the Web. Media other than text and images can currently be accessed off the Web only with links that, when clicked display the media object by itself. Multimedia on the Web does not provide us with new information. But the integration of multiple media components into a united and adapted presentation can greatly enhance our perception of this information.
Multimedia can certainly make the display of media data more captivating and engaging.
It can also use timing to make the presentation more informative by, for example, ensuring that description in an audio track of an event in occurring in a video track both play at the same time. Also, the use of multiple media in a presentation enables adaptation of how information is conveyed to users with different abilities on systems with different facilities. These benefits of multimedia have long been achievable through closed formats or with Java programs. What is novel about SMIL is not with new multimedia functions, or that multimedia can be done on the Web, but that it is encoded in a standardized XML-defined format. SMIL places multimedia within the developing Web framework at a higher level than a programming format like Java can.