Less Rain is looking for a versatile Flash developer for full-time employment in our Berlin office with a solid background in object oriented web development and in-depth experience in AS3. We are seeking a motivated and confident problem solver with an eye for interaction design and a passion for web technologies.

You will be working in an international team of experienced developers in Berlin. Your role involves working closely with our front-end designers and the developer team to implement projects ranging from mini-sites to large scale consumer & corporate websites. You will be working on projects such as:

• http://www.redbullsoapboxracer.com/
• http://www.alfaromeogiulietta.co.uk/
• http://www.passage-experience.com/
• http://www.redbullflightlab.com/

Requirements

• 3+ years experience in Flash development and solid Actionscript 3 skills
• A feel for good interaction design and usability
• Experience in working with frameworks such as PureMVC or Flex
• Experience with Flash integration technologies (XML, Remoting, Webservices)
• Experience in related technologies and APIs is an advantage (i.e. Papervision 3D, Facebook API…)
• English speakers are welcome!

Please send your CV and portfolio to Thomas Meyer.
We can only accept applications via e-mail.

For further information about Less Rain visit:
http://www.lessrain.com
http://blog.lessrain.com
 

Julius Wiedemann and Rob Ford from the FWA teamed up for TASCHEN Verlag to present you with "sixty success stories from clients' briefings to final projects" - and two of them are ours. Both our Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab and Vandalsquad feature as examples for a successful investment online.

You can flip through the entire book here, or read more at the TASCHEN website. The Internet Case Study Book is out in April 2010.

While developing an AIR project one of the most annoying problems we are having is the impossibility to intercept when a runtime exception is triggered in the installed AIR application.

After Googling a bit we found a couple of interesting solutions provided by Xavi Beumala in his blog:

Debugging production ready AIR applications

The Problem:

In Firefox 3.6 for Windows if you embed a Flash Movie with the wmode parameter in the object tag set as default (wmode=”window”) the mouse wheel event is not propagated correctly, instead it is captured automatically by the Flash movie making the scroll wheel not working properly.

Common Example (youtube video):

If you hover the mouse cursor over the embedded video, the mouse wheel doesn’t scroll any more, instead if you leave the embedded video area the mouse wheel scrolls correctly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySEQMOPXccE

The Solution:

The only solution I have found so far is setting the wmode parameter in the object tag to “opaque” or “transparent” so the mouse wheel event is propagated correctly, but this solution is far away from ideal.

Our friends at Brauchbarkeit have just released a new game on the AppStore called “Doppelgänger”.

It’s a well made and challenging memory game, perfect for your casual gaming needs. Check it out at One more Games or on the AppStore

FireFox 3.6 draws one-pixel border aorund embedded SWF (also occurs with Java Applets) where the width and height is set to 100%, causing pointless scrollbars to appear.

It seems to be a side effect of fixed usability problem which makes old bugs to appear.

Solution 1:

In about:config:

Set browser.display.focusringonanything to true and set browser.display.focusring_width to 0

Solution 2:

Paste this in your css/stylesheet:

a:focus, object:focus { outline: none; -moz-outline-style: none; }

Thanks Thomas for the info.

See more at support.mozilla.com forum (FireFox 3.6 draws a one-pixel border…)

After almost a year in development, we finally went live with www.costanavarino.com, and immediately got ‘Site of the day’ in www.thefwa.com.

We have been working on the branding of this prime holiday destination since 2 years now, arguably the biggest branding exercise Less Rain had ever gone through. To this end we have enlisted the help of our friends at Praline

The website aims to collect information from all areas of knowledge related to Costa Navarino - history, flora, fauna, traditions, food - and prepare the visitor for the wealth of experience Costa Navarino has to offer.

The site has been built in a totally dynamic way, with full screen content and a variety of AS3 animations connecting all pages and interface elements in a seamless fashion. It features a computational soundtrack, using a small number of samples to construct 25 different sound scapes, saving a great deal of download time.

Vote now for your favourite website of the year, at the Favourite Website Awards. We hope it’ll be our Red Bull Soapbox Racer!

Update: The results are in. The FWA Website of the Year is “We choose the Moon”, and “Labuat” won the People’s Choice Award. Congratulations!

The Red Bull Soapbox Racer has been showered with awards this week. After winning gold twice at the Davey Awards, we’ve also won gold at the London International Awards in the Online Games category - ahead of Dentsu, Tribal DDB and Sapient. Soapbox Racer is currently also nominated at the British Interactive Media Awards.

The Less Rain London office is now looking for a Full Time AS3 Developer to complete the team!

You will be developing interactive environments in Actionscript 3.0, ranging from consumer & corporate websites to Rich Internet Applications. Here are some examples of the level of coding we expect:

• www.redbullsoapboxracer.com
• www.redbull.com/flightlab
• www.neoderma.com

Your role involves working with our front-end designers, back-end developers and Flash Developer team. Every project we do has a great concept / idea behind it and pushes the boundaries of what is possible, so you will never get bored doing the same website over and over again.

As a person you are quick, accurate and stress tolerant, a problem solver with good communication skills. You are self-motivated; flash development is a passion, not just a job. You like to try out new things and are willing to pass your knowledge to others.

You have a wide knowledge of Flash development and in-depth experience in web development.

Skills

• Solid Actionscript 3 Development (OOP)
• Experience with architecture/design patterns (MVC)
• Experience with Data integration (XML, SOAP, Remoting, etc)
• Experience with Papervision3D and/or other 3D Flash open library
• Strong Math and Physics capabilities
• Game development experience appreciated
• High level understanding of Flash, Flex, AIR and other core Flash Platform
• Basic third-party 3D software knowledge appreciated (such as 3ds, maya, cinema4D, unity3D, Shiva)
• Understanding of Back-end and Database technologies, but not necessarily having the ability to implement.
• Community awareness with new technologies, frameworks, resources and open source libraries
• Programmatic motion appreciated
• Eye for detail, performance and optimization
• Experience with video and audio
• Low-Level development appreciated (bytes level)
• Eclipse/FDT, Flex Builder and SVN appreciated
• Basic graphic design and motion graphics skills
• Basic Photoshop and Illustrator skills
• Basic understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Initial salaries are comparable to the market level and there will be a chance to negotiate as you develop.

Send your resume, references and portfolio to vassilios-at-lessrain.com.

Please include salary expectations.

Well the title says it all, our Red Bull Soapbox Racer won Gold in the Food and Beverages Category and Best in Show in the Events Category at this year’s W3 Awards.

Following our “shock and awe” presentation at the Flex User Group Berlin in August, we’re invited to present the Red Bull Soap Box Racer at the Adobe Flex User Group in Hamburg on the 20th of October.

Check the flexughh announcement for details. Thanks to Fabian and the flexughh for hosting us!