After running alongside Software Development '96 East/West in its highly successful launch year, Web '97 will roll out as the largest and most comprehensive event for Web professionals in the industry. The marketing and public relations blitz for Web '97 is expected to attract nearly 15,000 professionals, including over 1,500 conference attendees.

"Web '97 will represent the largest and most important trade show investment for MFI in 1997," states Don Pazour, president of MFI, "and reflects our commitment to the interactive online market. With support from MFI publications like Web Techniques, 3D Design, Interactivity, DV Magazine, Game Developer, SysAdmin Magazine, LAN Magazine, and our dominance of the programmer market, MFI is going to pull out all the stops to ensure that Web '97 is the event that will drive the interactive online industry."

"Conferences currently available for Web professionals do not address the marriage of disciplines from a product and platform independent stance," says Eric Faurot, director of Web '97. "An event of this magnitude - from the training needs of this exploding community, to the support of the leading Web technology vendors - must be held in the city which spawned this revolution and in a convention center of Moscone's capacity."

Expect over 150 exhibitors at the Moscone Center during Web '97. Recognizing the need for an in-depth and impartial forum, the biggest players in the industry sponsored Web '96, including: Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, Macromedia, MKS, Intel, IBM, Apple, Spyglass, Netscape, Sybase and others. In 1996, these key vendors showered Web Design & Development with nearly 100 hours of free technical seminars, and over 100 new product releases, including Sun's Java Workshop, Macromedia's Director 5, NeXT's WebObjects, and Sybase's web.sql.

MFI has crafted a course curriculum which reflects the many disciplines of the Web design and development process. Web '97 will feature over 125 technical classes spread out over six tracks - Strategy and Content Development, Design, Programming, Architecture Design and Maintenance, Usability, and Tools and Techniques - which will take Web professionals through every phase of creating and evolving successful websites. The featured keynotes and speakers at Web '96 represented some of the most important players in the industry, including Bud Colligan, president of Macromedia; James Gosling, creator of Java; Marc Pesce, creator of VRML; and Tim Berners-Lee, father of the Web.

Web '97 will continue to explore the creation of truly interactive websites and will demonstrate the latest design techniques and the new wave of programming tools that can be used to exploit this dynamic medium. Topics will include Information Design for the Web, VRML Basics, The Fundamentals of CGI, Writing Perl Scripts, Advanced Java Programming, Electronic Money, 4GLs for the Web, Server APIs, Meta Design, Public Key Encryption, and Advanced Database Search and Retrieval Technology.