As Google is currently on the mission to make life easier for developers, the company last week has announced a major update in its open-source Flutter framework, due to which users will now enjoy support for both desktop and web applications.
Hence, moving on to become a portable framework, Flutter 2 would now be more than just a mobile framework and can be really useful if you are looking to create stylish and feature-filled Web Application Development.
For those of you, who haven’t used Flutter before, it is a framework for developers who can then build “native” apps on operating systems such as Android, and through it, those apps also become workable on devices with iOS, Windows, and macOS support. The main idea of the framework revolves around using Google’s Dart programming language and have the app run across multiple platforms based on that while eliminating the need to write the code all over again for every version.
So, according to the announcement done via blogpost, Google has also brought some useful changes to its client-optimized programming language Dart for mobile, desktop, server, and web applications, along with the updated network.
Google explains that with Flutter 2, the company is aiming to “fundamentally shift how developers think about building their apps.” They want developers to focus more on enhancing the experience rather than thinking about how to make the app-friendly across all platforms.
As a result, Flutter 2’s update includes production-quality support for the web so that developers can now take advantage of web innovations, including more rich platform application programming interfaces, which will, of course, give rise to more sophisticated apps that will have hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics packed with flexible layouts.
Flutter 2 Focuses
Flutter 2 focuses on three specific web app scenarios: progressive web apps that combine the reach of the internet with the capabilities of desktop apps, single-page apps that load once and transmit data to and from web services, and existing Flutter mobile apps to the web that it’s bringing to the web.
Undoubtedly, what we personally found amazing in Flutter 2 is its ability to let mobile app developers run their apps on the web through the exact similar codebase. This move is going to be extremely beneficial, considering how developers would now be at ease of using different services without having to install the respective apps.
Overall, it looks clear that Google has evolved Flutter from merely being a user interface toolkit to a much wholesome software development toolkit through which developers would now be easily able to reach out to places that otherwise can be tough with other development techniques.
Right now, you can find more than 150,000 apps on Google Play that were designed with Flutter. Hence, now that Flutter 2 is out with support for desktop and web applications, all of these apps can upgrade to Flutter 2 for free.
Features in Flutter 2
More notable features in Flutter 2 include the all-new rendering engine powered by Canvaskit, small detailing options like auto-filling of text, improved control over address bar URLs, and also routing. Besides that, developers will also get to enjoy enhanced support for interactive scrollbars, more keyboard shortcuts, and also new accessibility features that would be available for Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS, altogether.
Flutter 2 also includes Google Mobile Ads for Flutter, which precisely is a software development kit to go with Google’s AdMob and AdManager. Apart from that, we are also hearing reports of Flutter Fix through which developers would be able to make changes to their existing code to make it ready for the latest edition of the Flutter API.
Google is hopeful that with Flutter 2, executives from Enterprises will benefit a great deal because of increased developer velocity. All in all, the price still, however, is going to make them more dependent on the tool and Google itself, of course.
