Toptal Blog

The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, management consultants, 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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How to Build CSS-only Smart Layouts With Flexbox

Although CSS was meant to deal with styling, creating extraordinary layouts on the web has always been a unique challenge and almost always required the developer to resort to JavaScript. However, Flexbox is here to change that.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Diego Díaz walks us through the basics of Flexbox and some cool examples of how Flexbox can be used to build smart CSS-only layouts.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Diego Díaz

Diego Díaz

Diego is an experienced web developer with a passion for UI and UX. He strives to create fluid layouts for any device and architecture.

Top 10 Most Common Spring Framework Mistakes

Java’s open source Spring framework is a popular tool for creating high performing applications using plain old Java objects, but as with any tool, inappropriate use can lead to trouble. In this article, we cover the most common pitfalls of using the Spring framework so new and experienced developers alike have a roadmap of what to avoid.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Toni Kukurin

Toni Kukurin

Toni enjoys architecting software solutions and applying his engineering skills to solve interesting real-world problems.

Open-source Software: Investable Business Model or Not?

Open-source software is a catalyst for growth and change in the IT industry, and one can’t overestimate its importance to the sector. In recent years, there has been a surge in venture capital dollars pouring into the sector. In this article, we analyse whether recent valuations make sense, and whether the open-source model lends itself to the returns profile that venture capital investors look for.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Natallia Chykina

Natallia Chykina

Natallia has extensive experience with investments and M&A deals across a range of industries (oil & gas, consumer & retail, FIG, TMT).

A Rant Against Pretty App Designs

Some designers make the mistake of designing products for their own vanity, focusing on the veneer instead of designing great UX. But designing for usability and delight brings greater benefits.

11-minute readContinue Reading
Miklos Philips

Miklos Philips

Miklos is a UX designer, product design strategist, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.

How to Create Custom Loading Animations to Decrease Bounce Rates

Nobody likes staring at an empty screen while content loads. A well-crafted animation helps people stay engaged while they wait. This tutorial will show how loading animations can be done with ease.

7-minute readContinue Reading
Tidjane Tall

Tidjane Tall

Tidjane is a UX/UI design leader who connects user’s needs and goals to deliver strategic solutions for companies like Adobe and Google.

Write Fat-free Java Code with Project Lombok

Java has some idiosyncrasies of its own and design choices that can make it rather verbose. While Java is a mature and performant programming language, developers frequently need to write boilerplate code that bring little or no real value other than complying with some set of constraints and conventions.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Miguel García López shows how Project Lombok can help dramatically reduce the amount of boilerplate code that needs to be written in a Java application.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Miguel García López

Miguel García López

Miguel is a passionate software engineer with experience in embedded systems, back-end services, and modern web and mobile applications.

Android Threading: All You Need to Know

Android provides many ways of creating and managing threads, and third-party libraries exist to make that even easier. However, with so many options, choosing the right approach can be quite confusing.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Eliran Goshen discusses some common scenarios in Android development that involve threading and how each of the scenarios can be dealt with.

15-minute readContinue Reading
Eliran Goshen

Eliran Goshen

With a solid BSc in computer science, Eliran has built numerous professional Android apps in Java and Android/iOS apps with React Native.

A Unit Testing Practitioner’s Guide to Everyday Mockito

Using Mockito is not just a matter of adding another dependency. It requires changing how you think about your unit tests while removing a lot of boilerplate. In this article, we cover multiple mock interfaces, listening invocations, matchers, and argument captors, and see firsthand how Mockito makes your tests cleaner and easier to understand.

22-minute readContinue Reading
Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan has both back-end and front-end development experience. He has built software for banks, medical organizations, and city administration.

Xamarin Forms, MVVMCross, and SkiaSharp: The Holy Trinity of Cross-Platform App Development

Developing a mobile app for multiple platforms can be quite costly. Implementing the same functionalities in multiple programming languages and dealing with a plethora of unique libraries for each platform requires a massive amount of time and knowledge.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Sylvain Gravel talks about Xamarin and its companion technologies that let you build mobile applications for multiple platforms without compromising familiarity, performance, and uniqueness.

9-minute readContinue Reading
Sylvain Gravel

Sylvain Gravel

As a cross-platform C# specialist, he has worked on mobile and desktop apps from the start in the entertainment, health and sport industry.

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