Who we are

Flying Saucer is a web development shop founded by Chris Sessions and Seth Engelhard in Portland, Oregon.

What we do

Flying Saucer brings the best open source technologies together with custom web application development to meet your requirements. The solutions we deliver are elegant and easy to use, reliable and maintainable. Recent work has ranged from e-commerce solutions to social media sites, from content management systems to Facebook games.

We specialize in test-driven Ruby on Rails programming. Test-driven development makes your project more reliable and maintainable over time. Rails gives your project a rapid development framework and a mature ecosystem that’s constantly being improved by an innovative and passionate community. Having scaled Rails sites to handle millions of daily page views, we build every site to maintain performance under heavy demand.

Our client-facing code is clean XHTML/CSS optimized for strong search engine performance. We also have expertise in AS3 programming for dynamic Flash game and widget development.

Projects

Jitterbug is an open source Ruby gem developed by Flying Saucer. Jitterbug provides on-demand text-based header graphics using non-web fonts, and is an excellent solution for internationalization and other cases where dynamic rich text headers are required.

Contact us

To discuss your project and arrange for a free estimate, please email us or give us a call at (503) 288-3432.

Portfolio

Calvin Coconut Island ~ 2009

  • Facebook API Integration
  • Ruby Merb/Datamapper on Postgres
  • XHTML, CSS, Ajax, Flash AS3

Calvin Coconut Island, a Webvisionary Award Finalist, is a tropical island simulation game built on the Facebook platform. It features a scrolling, isometric view of the island, where players can grow crops and resources to trade with their friends on Facebook.

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BirdFellow Journal ~ 2009

  • Custom social media toolset
  • Ruby Merb/Datamapper on Postgres
  • XHTML, CSS, Ajax, Flash AS3

BirdFellow is a social media website for bird watchers. Its phased rollout includes a blog and a content management system for building a media-based online birding reference. Its social media tools will eventually be opened to the public.

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Renfro Cuningham ~ 2008

  • Ruby on Rails
  • XHTML, CSS, Ajax, Flash AS3

Renfro Cuningham is the sister company of the Cuningham Group whose site we launched in 2007. This site is based on the same CMS and basic structure as the Cuningham site but was tailored to fit the needs of a smaller firm with fewer projects in their portfolio.

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SoundSafe ~ 2008

(no longer live)
  • Ruby Merb/Datamapper on MySql
  • XHTML, CSS, Ajax, Flash AS3

SoundSafe was a non-profit dedicated to preserving the San Francisco music and arts scene. SoundSafe.org was social media site for the San Francisco music industry and musicians to promote, connect, find rehearsal spaces, and contact venues. Members were able to upload photos, music, post events on the calendar, and contact other users on the site.

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Big Citizen ~ 2008

  • Ruby on Rails
  • Flash AS3

Big Citizen is a proof-of-concept for a simple, fluid interface to a large amount of complex data. It uses candidates' claims in the 2008 presidential election as a sample data set.

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