Web Front-end

Software is regular and predictable, so it seems paradoxical that practically every web app needs a sizable administrative area. The explanation for this paradox lies in software’s interaction with humans. While you probably can’t build a fully automated system, there’s a lot you can do to save time and money.

In this post, Entrepreneur Jack Kinsella explains what you can do to streamline administration, thus saving valuable time and making your projects more profitable. Adminimisation is the word of the day!

Your website is gaining traction, and you are growing rapidly. Ruby/Rails is your programming language of choice. Your team is bigger and you’ve given up on “fat models, skinny controllers” as a design style for your Rails apps. However, you still don’t want to abandon using Rails? No problem.

In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Eqbal Quran explains how you can decouple and isolate your Rails components using nothing Plain Old Ruby Objects. Ruby objects and abstractions can decouple concerns, simplify testing, and help you produce clean, maintainable code.

You’ve heard that Magento is the eCommerce platform to use if you’re serious about your business – and you’re serious about your business – so you’ve decided on Magento. But do you know what you’re getting into?

In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Andrew Hughes walks us through the difference between WordPress WooCommerce and Magento. While Magento is the expert’s eCommerce platform of choice, it’s not always the right solution, depending on your client.

Let’s face it: Sometimes you just need to rant. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. It’s called devRant, and it’s the place for developers to vent about clients from hell, non-technical friends and family, and clueless recruiters.

In this roundup, devRant Co-Founder David Fox shares his favorite collection of rants since launching. Some will make you laugh. Others will make you laugh so hard you cry. And just about all of them will make you empathize with the author.

If you’re a veteran frontender, you’ve probably had some not-so-great experiences with designers, and chances are some designers have had an equally bad experience working with you. How can you make sure you get exactly what you need from your designer, without placing an undue burden on them?

It’s a tall order, but in this article Freelance Software Engineer Vedran Aberle Tokic outlines and addresses a number of potential issues that may become roadblocks for your execution. Implementing these suggestions may result in overhead for designers, but they can save enormous amounts of time and headache elsewhere.

Gone are the days where front-end developers for web applications could use ad-hoc JavaScript with jQuery and such all in a single JavaScript file. Modern web applications require more effort from the developer to adopt an overall architecture and development process. Building such front-end applications relies on lots of external dependencies and modular source code, and these elements necessitate automation to save developers time and reduce the chances of mistakes.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Eric Grosse shows us how various combinations of the popular tools Webpack, Browserify, Gulp and Npm can benefit us by enhancing our development environment and allowing us to focus on writing the app itself.

WordPress is easily the most powerful open-source blogging and content management system available online today. As WordPress is easy enough to set up and has a user-friendly approach, many developers are often underestimating it and so make mistakes in development.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Andrew Schultz outlines the 10 most common mistakes that WordPress developers should be aware of for future projects.