The strongest example of this may be the Timing and Synchronization Module, with its expansion of hard and soft sync utility. Hard sync confines an entire presentation to the exact description of synchronous relationships in a time graph, while soft sync allows for a looser performance, taking into account changes in network congestion. Changes in network traffic would disrupt the SMIL 1.0 hard sync of an entire document. But SMIL Boston allows authors to apply hard and soft sync to separate elements within the document, making it much less vulnerable to fluctuations in network activity. These new modules improve interactivity and navigation as well.
Users can now navigate within the presentation, changing only part of the display.
This function is ideal for presentations with a table of contents as the tables can be integrated into the same SMIL file, simplifying authoring. Plus, they can create these robust animations using a plain text editor. For both these reasons, the SMIL Animation Module far surpasses GIF animation, and therefore could very likely supplant it as the most popular animation type on the Web. From an author s perspective, SMIL Boston seems headed in the right direction. However, only four of the nine new extensions are detailed in the current SMIL Boston specification, and there is much more functionality planned.