We are seeking a Flash ActionScript 3 developer to add to our growing team.

You are:

An incredibly passionate, motivated Actionscript3 developer always on the cutting edge and able to rock out amazing work very quickly. You work in fullscreen, and think websites should be more experiential than static. You pride yourself in your beautiful, fluid tweening and movements, flawlessly organized code, and having never seen a Flash timeline. You see The Matrix, even in your sleep, and start to get the shakes if you are deprived of a computer for too long.

You recognize that Flash is NOT dead that it is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the most powerful rich-media web development platform in the world – no matter what Apple says. You have fun playing with HTML5 and are eager to learn its new features as it matures, but your life’s blood is AS3 and you can’t live without it.

You are confident in what you can do, but your ego is in check and you’re still open to learning new things and new ways. You are comfortable working on your own and in a team in a modern open office, and would benefit from the mentorship of a Flash master.

You have:

-          High level experience with Flash Design, Actionscript 3.0
-          Experience in Server Side Database MySQL
-          Experience with PHP
-          Excellent spoken and written communication skills
-          Ability to clearly articulate design requirements
-          Organized
-          Punctual
-          Attention to Detail (a MUST!)
-          Experience in other Adobe Creative Suite Applications (Photoshop, Illustrator)

You are not:

A junior with no experience. A senior with bad habits. A company or subcontracting production house. Please don’t waste our time if you are.

We are:

An agency unlike any other. Our work is immersive and beautiful – it has to be because we deal with premium brands. Every project sets a new standard and is immediately copied (poorly) by our client’s competition. We are downtown Toronto in the Agency district.

If you’re what we’re looking for, please send your resume and portfolio to careers@pixelcarve.com.

We thank all applicants for their interest; however only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Salary:

Dependent on experience and skills.

No matter which side of the Flash vs. HTML debate you find yourself on, there is no denying that both of them possess strengths and weaknesses. For creating immersive, rich, visually impactful experiences, Flash is still the best way to go – and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. And yes, that includes HTML5 and its many accompanying tools (I’m looking at you AJAX).

Flash’s strength is also its weakness; it’s a powerful tool with near limitless possibilities. Far too often it’s used to assault a user’s screen without regard for message, restraint, relevance or style. This leads to poor experiences, and the perpetuating myths about Flash’s usefulness.

There are infinite examples of REALLY BAD Flash websites. You know the ones – they take FOREVER to load, only to make you “skip intro”, and then treating you to a visual assault of every tool, trick and blinking animation effect the “designer” could think of. Google can’t read it (but really, why would it want to), and even if you wanted to send a sub-page to a friend or copy and paste a phone number it just won’t let you. And if this atrocity’s maker had the gall to force open a fullscreen browser window on you… well… hey, we get the hate! It leaves a bad taste and rightfully deserves the bad reputation the likes of Steve Jobs and others have given it.

Or does it?

There IS a better way. Flash is a powerful development platform that, when used correctly, can allow for the creation of the most basic, simple experience, or the most beautifully, richly interactive experience you have ever seen.

Now let’s take it to the next level. When used correctly and with its full feature set, Flash websites can offer superior Search Engine Optimization (SEO), can be Content Managed, and can offer all of the same copy+paste and unique page linking goodness of conventional HTML websites.

Creating these types of highly functional Flash websites does require specialized skills. Think of it as right brain v. left brain if you will. Flash websites have typically been built by artist/designers who have been using the default set of tools available within Flash the best they can for years. But much like the web as a whole has evolved, so has Flash. It is no longer a glorified scripting language, but rather a media-focused, object-oriented development platform. This allows for a blank canvas on which pretty much anything can be built – displayed on any digital medium from web browser to digital signage to kiosks.

As such, proper and effective Flash development has evolved to require a diverse, skilled team of strategists, designers and developers. And it makes sense; major companies wouldn’t dream of building their entire brand messaging and marketing campaigns using only one type of skillset. Technology has evolved to allow for fully interactive brand experiences that can fill a screen, powerfully blending images, video, audio, vector graphics, fonts and motion into something that can also be indexed, managed and optimized. That begins and ends with Flash.

If you agree that a strong web is an open web, you love the Flash platform because it benefits from both the resources of the open source community, as well as the visionary driving force of a single company (much like Java by Sun Microsystems); a company that works intimately with its community to implement new features and guide development. Because it’s simply a language, it can be built in anything – we ourselves don’t even develop in Adobe’s Flash, and we compile with the open source Flex SDK. This lends itself well to the massive community contributing to the codebase. Adobe has even made available the full player specifications should someone feel inclined to make their own.

So forget everything you thought you knew about Flash, and let me welcome you to the new generation of the web’s best rich-media development platform. Learn how.

Until next time,

Curtis Priest
Pixelcarve Inc.
Partner/President & CEO

Enter Adobe, and their release of Flash 9 with its shiny new ActionScript 3 (AS3) language. As the true power of this new platform is being discovered, companies like us are using it to wipe out all of the things that we ourselves, as web users, disliked about Flash sites. Personally, I absolutely hated not being able to use the back/forward button in my browser, or send a specific page to a friend without a convoluted explanation as to how to get there. If I want to bookmark, or send to a friend the stunning Graves 601 Hotel project that Yabu Pushelberg designed, it shouldn’t be any harder than this: http://www.yabupushelberg.com/#graves_601_hotel

Now enter Google, a company that once shunned Flash, has now seen the light! Adam Ostrow looks into Google’s new love for this powerful interactive platform, and its support for analytics within Flash. Welcome to the world of Flash without compromise!

http://mashable.com/2008/11/17/google-analytics-for-flash/