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'We're very committed to the Mac platform and we're looking forward to OS X,' said Lynch. Macromedia CEO Rob Burgess having already launched the presentation by affirming that, 'the Mac will always be our core market.'

As well as announcing the forthcoming OS X releases of FreeHand, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and the Flash player, Lynch discussed how Macromedia sees Web development over the next few years, particularly how Flash would be central to this.

First of Macromedia's OS X releases will be Freehand and Scott Thompson, senior software alchemist for the Macintosh, showed how Freehand's use of the OS X's Quartz graphics interface improves the product's performance ö demonstrating that an image doesn't need to redraw after palette boxes are dragged over it, for instance.

Lynch was concerned with other forthcoming developments,

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including a new version of the Shockwave player that supports Intel's 3D streaming format and showed how a 3D object can be viewed and rotated in the player. 'We think this is a great way to deliver 3D content on the Web,' he said. He also showed the Flash player displaying content on the PocketPC, Microsoft's handheld platform, and said that the company is working on software and players that will allow developers to create content that works across multiple devices.

Lynch also said that the company was in the process of bringing its products closer together and demonstrated how Dreamweaver Fireworks Studio and UltraDev4 are interoperable: 'We're seeing teams of people building web projects, so we're trying to make our products work better together.'

Advertising on the Web

Rob Burgess spent some time discussing the future of advertising on the Web, amusing the audience with several uninspiring banner ads of the kind that pervade the Web: 'A lot of people think that advertising on the Web sucks and they're right for the most part.'

The biggest problem reported by Web developers, he said, was the 'lack of ubiquity of the Flash player.' Consequently, only one per cent of Web ads are Flash-based against 230 million downloads of Flash 5 player during the last quarter of 2000. Burgess called on Mac Web designers to 'take creativity to the next level....we need you to jump on this.'