Toptal Blog

It wasn’t easy, but you looked uncertainty in the eye and made the biggest bet of your career. Now what? We’ve got an encouraging word for new freelancers and anyone who’s braved self-employment.

Nearly all computer applications rely on one of two principal message standards: JSON and XML. Today, JSON is the most widely used format, having overtaken XML within the last 5 years, but is JSON better than XML?

In part 1 of this multi-part series on JSON vs. XML, Toptal Freelance Full-stack Developer Seva Safris will take a closer look at the history of the web to uncover the original purpose of XML and JSON, and analyze the software trends in recent years that lead to JSON becoming more popular than XML.

Since designers work with so much text-based content, creating an effective typographic hierarchy—one that clearly shows what information is most important—is a vital skill for designers to master.

Rails 6 is finally here, featuring major improvements and clever new features that should make development easier and faster than ever.

In this article, Toptal Ruby on Rails Developer Avant Mittal dives into the Rails 6 changelog to introduce you to these new features and explain how you will be using them in your next Rails project.

Thematic analysis, an approach used to analyze qualitative data, is central to credible research and can be used to improve UX design by uncovering user needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Test automation engineers continuously research the latest tools and techniques to ensure that their test automation framework stays fast, stable, and easy to use.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Java Developer Simon Stratton will take a look at some tips that you can use to update your framework for 2019 by improving your use of Selenium Grid, Java’s wait function, and Chrome DevTools.

One of the most notable developments of recent years has been the boom in veganism. The Beyond Meat Company’s IPO in May 2019 captured this zeitgeist and is one of the stand-out financial events of the year. Can the company live up to the hype and satisfy its investors?

Chatbots are revolutionizing the way people interact with technology. In recent years, their simplicity and low cost have helped drive adoption across various fields and industries.

In this article, Toptal Natural Language Processing Developer Ali Abdel Aal demonstrates how you can create and deploy a Telegram chatbot in a matter of hours.

Without interface copy, there’d be UX chaos on a global scale. Thankfully, we can use words whenever we want, but how do we use them well? These easy-to-use principles lead to convincing microcopy.