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 Create a Swipeable UITabBar From the Ground Up

Apple’s iOS SDK features a bevy of built-in UI components, but what happens when you decide you need a bit more? What if you need to create a swipeable UITabBar?

In this post, Toptal iOS Developer George Vashakidze explains how he tried using a third-party library, and why he chose to create his own solution instead.

9-minute readContinue Reading
George Vashakidze

George Vashakidze

George is an extremely motivated and hardworking mobile developer with extensive experience working with iOS and Android.

A Road to Better Agile Testing

The yearly World Quality Report created by Capgemini shows that 42% of survey respondents list a “lack of professional test expertise” as a challenge in applying testing to Agile development. While the advent of Agile has brought the increased speed of iterations for software development, in some cases this has come at the cost of quality.

8-minute readContinue Reading
Vytas Butkus

Vytas Butkus

Vytas is a professional project and product manager leading products and projects in education, 3D graphics, eCommerce, and adtech.

How to Approach Modern WordPress Development (Part 2)

WordPress code, especially back-end PHP code, is often a mess—even in WP core! But legacy code is no excuse. Find out how to develop WP customizations the right way, so your code is readable and maintainable.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Andrey Shalashov

Andrey Shalashov

Andrey is a full-stack web developer and WordPress expert. Lately, his focus is on serverless computing and JAMstack.

UX Myths – Prototyping, User Testing, and UX Deliverables

Prototyping, user testing, and UX deliverables are important to the design process, but there are some UX myths that can put these processes at risk of being devalued by clients.

9-minute readContinue Reading
James Tucker

James Tucker

James is a problem-solver who fuses cognitive science techniques with interaction design to make products people love.

ELK to AWS: Managing Logs With Less Hassle

The ELK stack boasts a range of impressive capabilities, but in some scenarios, it can be difficult to configure and maintain.

In this article, Toptal DevOps Engineer Fabrice Triboix explains why he decided to shift to a serverless solution that requires less maintenance and allows for superior scaling.

9-minute readContinue Reading
Fabrice Triboix

Fabrice Triboix

Fabrice is a cloud architect and software developer with 20+ years of experience who’s worked for Cisco, Samsung, Philips, Alcatel, and Sagem.

Will JS Frameworks Spark a Front-end Revolution?

Are Vue.js, React, and Angular actually delivering a good developer and user experience, or are they used simply because they’re the current de facto standard? Discover some exciting approaches to web development.

< 5-minute readContinue Reading
Kevin Bloch

Kevin Bloch

Kevin has 20+ years among full-stack, desktop, and indie game development. He lately specializes in PostgreSQL, JavaScript, Perl, and Haxe.

What Is Strategic Design Thinking and How Can It Empower Designers?

Designers are not mere pixel pushers. If they improved communication and employed their skills more effectively through strategic design thinking, they could make a bigger impact with their work.

8-minute readContinue Reading
Kent Mundle

Kent Mundle

Kent is a globally recognized environmental designer who uses design and writing to create innovative and transformative experiences.

A Deep Look at JSON vs. XML, Part 3: XML and the Future of JSON

In Part 1 and 2, we took a closer look at the evolution of the web, how XML and JSON arose, and the differences between the two standards.

In this final part of our series on JSON vs. XML, Toptal Freelance Full-stack Developer Seva Safris looks at XML as a data interchange format and how well it supports complex requirements. And finally, he will discuss the future of JSON as well as explore solutions that bring the strengths of XML to JSON.

17-minute readContinue Reading
Seva Safris

Seva Safris

Seva is a veteran of both enterprise and startups and a UC Berkeley graduate in EECS and MSE with 20 years of industry experience.

A Deep Look At JSON vs. XML, Part 2: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Both

Nearly all computer applications rely on either JSON or XML. Today, JSON has overtaken XML, but is it better? In part 1 of this series on JSON vs. XML, we take a closer look at the history of the web to uncover the original purpose of XML and JSON and analyze how JSON became the popular choice.

15-minute readContinue Reading
Seva Safris

Seva Safris

Seva is a veteran of both enterprise and startups with 20 years of industry experience and a UC Berkeley graduate in EECS and MSE.

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