SAN JOSE, Calif. — In the battle for eyeballs on the Net, no one technology has had more of an impact as Flash, the animated Web design program from Macromedia .
But after a glut of cartoon-ish sites that forced surfers to skip intros, developers have had to look at other ways of capturing viewers undivided attention.
Enter the FlashKit Conference and Expo, which opened this morning here. The two-day event is produced by Jupitermedia , parent of this Web site and sponsored by DevX, Flash Kit.com, and Internet.com.
From beginners, to professional designers, to marketing professionals, the show brings together some of the best cutting edge strategies in the Web design sector.
The conference is emphasizing Flash development and design, as well as the business aspects of Flash. The morning sessions will provide beginner-to-intermediate topics, while the afternoon sessions will shift the focus to more advanced topics.
San Francisco-based Macromedia is again making a strong showing with a keynote by company Senior Product Manager Forest Key. The company is basking in the successes of its Flash Communication Server and its MX tool line.
The show is also taking on a more expanded roll now that Jupitermedia has acquired the assets to ArtToday, Inc. The division offers paid online subscriptions for photographs, clipart, Web graphics, animations and fonts. In addition, ArtToday.com, has a network of design-oriented Web sites that provide graphic users with royalty free content including Photos.com, ClipArt.com, Graphics.com, RebelArtist.com, and most importantly for this show: FlashComponents.com