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The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, finance experts, executives, and entrepreneurs, featuring key technology updates, tutorials, freelancer resources, and management insights.

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Toptal core team members share their experience, expertise, and perspectives on the Toptal Edge Blog

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Integrating Facebook Login in AngularJS App with Satellizer

Integrating social network login in web applications directly using their SDKs can be a time consuming task. The fact that these SDKs keep changing every now and then doesn’t help either.

In this article, Toptal engineer Son Nguyen Kim provides us with an in-depth tutorial on how to use Satellizer, a feature-rich AngularJS library to integrate Facebook Login in an AngularJS web app.

10 minute readContinue Reading
Son Nguyen Kim

Son Nguyen Kim

Son is highly skilled with software engineering and ML algorithms and always tries hard to tackle problems with a simple approach.

Commoditized Smartphones: Bringing 4G To Developing Countries

Are we really going to need $500 phones to get people in developing countries on 3G or 4G? Not really.

Welcome to the world of commoditised smartphones. Allow us to explain what’s going on and why it could have a significant impact on software and hardware industries.

11 minute readContinue Reading
Nermin Hajdarbegovic

Nermin Hajdarbegovic

As a veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrency.

Grape Gem Tutorial: How To Build A REST-Like API In Ruby

In this tutorial, Toptal Engineer Orban Botond demonstrates how to use the Grape gem – a REST-like API micro-framework for Ruby – to build backend support in Rails for a JSON API. Grape is designed to run as a mountable rack engine that complements your web applications without interfering with them.

15 minute readContinue Reading
Botond Orban

Botond Orban

Botond is a skilled developer who enjoys writing readable code. He learnt to program at 13 on a ZX Spectrum-compatible Russian PC.

What's New in ES6? Perspective of a CoffeeScript Convert

CoffeeScript allows developers to make the most out of JavaScript-based platforms without having to jump through its awkward language hoops. However, with the introduction of ES6 features into major JavaScript engines, plain JavaScript is now nearly as friendly and powerful out-of-the-box as CoffeeScript.

In this article, Toptal engineer William Coates shares his findings on ES6 from the perspective of a CoffeeScript convert.

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William Coates

William Coates

A full-stack developer and entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience, William (MSc) loves to keep up-to-date with the latest web tech.

Building an IMAP Email Client with PHP

Developers sometimes run into tasks that require access to email mailboxes. In most cases, this is done using the Internet Message Access Protocol, or IMAP. As a PHP developer, I first turned to PHP’s built in IMAP library, but this library is buggy and impossible to debug or modify. So today we will create a working IMAP email client from the ground up using PHP. We will also see how to use Gmail’s special commands.

9 minute readContinue Reading
Artem Galtsev

Artem Galtsev

Artem is a web developer and programmer with 10+ years of experience working with large organizations and on his own.

Build Ultra-modern Web Apps with Angular Material

Material Design uses a paper metaphor, bold intentions, and meaningful motion to give user interfaces an ultra-modern feel. Web applications built using AngularJS can now easily adopt these design principles using Angular Material, a reference implementation of Google’s Material Design Specification.

In this article, Toptal engineer Matt Spaulding walks us through the principles of Material Design and showcases some modern user interface elements built using the Angular Material library.

10 minute readContinue Reading
Matt Spaulding

Matt Spaulding

Matt is a full-stack developer that specializes in developing V1.0 software. He takes an idea and crafts it into a beautiful product.

3D Printing: Should Designers And Developers Take Notice?

3D printing is not a new technology, but recent advances in several fields have made it more accessible to hobbyists and businesses. Compared to other tech sectors, it’s still a small industry, but most analysts agree it has a lot of potential.

But where is the potential for freelance designers and software engineers?

14 minute readContinue Reading
Nermin Hajdarbegovic

Nermin Hajdarbegovic

As a veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrency.

NodeOS: The JavaScript Based Operating System

An operating system written in Node.js? Yes, it exists, and it’s called NodeOS. Think for a second about the progress Node.js has made in the short time it’s been around. Now, imagine the same thing happening with an operating system.

In this article, Toptal engineer Danny Morabito introduces us to NodeOS, guiding us with a step-by-step tutorial on how to create our first NodeOS application using nothing more than Node.js.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Danny Morabito

Danny Morabito

Danny is a PHP developer with a proven knack for coding efficiently and solving problems rapidly.

iOS Animation and Tuning for Efficiency

Smooth animations and flawless transitions are key to perceived performance in modern mobile applications. Without the right tools, tuning iOS animation for efficiency can be a challenge in itself.

In this article, Toptal engineer Stefan Progovac demonstrates the role of Instruments, a sophisticated set of performance profiling tools for iOS, discussing how they can help you understand animation performance bottlenecks and some strategies for working around them.

9 minute readContinue Reading
Stefan Progovac

Stefan Progovac

Stefan (MSc/Physics) is a highly skilled iOS developer who’s worked on apps used by millions for Target, Best Buy, and Coca-Cola.

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