// notes from the open web
This site started in 2008 as a companion to a book about SMIL, the W3C standard for synchronized multimedia. The project wound down. The domain didn't. We still write here when something is worth writing about — open web technology, media engineering, whatever we're actually working on.
- 2025-01-08What a Video Container Actually Is (And Why It Matters)MP4, WebM, fMP4 — the container is not the codec. Once you have that straight, a lot of otherwise confusing behavior makes sense.
- 2024-07-22WebCodecs and the End of the Black BoxThe browser finally exposes its codec machinery. Here's what changes when you can actually touch the encode/decode pipeline.
- 2024-03-14SMIL Was Right. The Web Just Wasn't Ready.A look back at the W3C's synchronized multimedia standard — what it solved, why it stalled, and where the ideas ended up.