Google Announces Flutter 3, Now With macOS and Linux Desktop Support (xda-developers.com) 25
An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: Google created Flutter a number of years ago, with the aim to make a cross-platform software framework. Flutter's biggest strength is that it can be used to build applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS, and even the web, and all from the same shared codebase. While building apps for Windows received stable support back in February, both macOS and Linux were still only in beta. Now that's changing, as Google has announced Flutter 3 at this year's Google I/O, complete with stable support for building apps for macOS and Linux.
Of course, cross-platform support for both of these new platforms requires more than just programs being able to run. They need to fit in with the rest of the experience, and they need to support specific features that may be unique, as well. That's why Google is highlighting two things: the first is that Linux support helped by Canonical (the publisher of Ubuntu) and Google collaborating in order to "offer a highly-integrated, best-of-breed option for development."
As Google puts it, Canonical is already developing with "Flutter for key shell experiences including installation and firmware updates." What's more, their Linux-specific packages "provide an idiomatic API for core operating system services including dbus, gsettings, networkmanager, Bluetooth and desktop notifications, as well as a comprehensive theme and widget set for Yaru, the Ubuntu look and feel." As for macOS, Google invested in supporting both Intel and Apple Silicon devices, with Universal Binary support that allows apps to package executables that run natively on both architectures. Tim Sneath, Director of Product and UX for Flutter & Dart, highlights all the new improvements in a Medium post.
Of course, cross-platform support for both of these new platforms requires more than just programs being able to run. They need to fit in with the rest of the experience, and they need to support specific features that may be unique, as well. That's why Google is highlighting two things: the first is that Linux support helped by Canonical (the publisher of Ubuntu) and Google collaborating in order to "offer a highly-integrated, best-of-breed option for development."
As Google puts it, Canonical is already developing with "Flutter for key shell experiences including installation and firmware updates." What's more, their Linux-specific packages "provide an idiomatic API for core operating system services including dbus, gsettings, networkmanager, Bluetooth and desktop notifications, as well as a comprehensive theme and widget set for Yaru, the Ubuntu look and feel." As for macOS, Google invested in supporting both Intel and Apple Silicon devices, with Universal Binary support that allows apps to package executables that run natively on both architectures. Tim Sneath, Director of Product and UX for Flutter & Dart, highlights all the new improvements in a Medium post.
Be still my heart (Score:1, Troll)
Because Teh G makes it all aflutter. Ho-hum more of the same. Death will come soon. Like all that has ever been from Teh G. As they say out here in the boonies,
Yeah, that's what they say.
history (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:history (Score:4, Informative)
I would be a lot more interested in this if Google didn't have such a rich history of canceling things.
The Google Ads platform and its literal millions of lines of code is Flutter/Dart. They're not cancelling this platform anytime soon.
Re: (Score:1)
and? (Score:3)
Why would anybody care. We already have much better solutions for that.
Re: (Score:1)
While I cannot comment on "Other Solutions" I can say I have been generally happy with Flutter.
Re: (Score:3)
Then name one or two, I'm interested.
Re: (Score:2)
Qt, GTK, Electron, most new programming languages.
Re: (Score:2)
You must be kidding.
Qt is tied to C++, so you have a point.
GTK is 400 year old C busshit no one can really use for anything useful.
Electron is a JavaScript Framework.
How can anything like that be better (or even on par) than a true cross platform language(Dart) and framework(Flutter)?
How does it perform? are we penalizing users? (Score:3)
I don't really care about cross-platform support as my target audience would all be using the same device (iPad). How does it compare to a native app in terms of performance and efficiency (battery life, binary size, etc)?
On a semi-related note, I despite how bloated modern JavaScript web apps have become. Simple pages that just render a layout similar to the same ones we were using in the 90s download 30 JavaScript libs and in the end display text and have some form inputs, yet have to make 400 REST calls. In the mid 90s, we had server-side rendering and it was much faster. I know this because our company has a 20 year old app no one bothered to update. It's AMAZING!!!! It loads quickly and smoothly and gives perfect feedback. I open it in a new tab and when the tab loading icon stops, it's ready to use. Text scrolls smoothly. It even looks really nice. When you view source, you can see a human being wrote it and didn't use 400 nested CSS divs to render a simple section or use crazy framework upon framework.
So...will Flutter give me web 2.0/3.0 equivalent apps that make the user suffer for the convenience of the developer?...between terrible performance, bloated code, etc?...or will it give a nice experience that a user would actually appreciate?
Re: (Score:2)
It's internal, so devices are set (Score:2)
If I was making money from my apps, I am not sure I would want to give EVERYONE a mediocre experience rather than just maintain 2 codebases. For most business apps, the server-side component is where most of the meat is. The
Re: (Score:2)
It's a bit of a silly question. If you can provide the same functionality for no additional cost in time or money why would you NOT use it? If TCO is pretty much equal between using it and not using it the flexibility is always going to add to its value.
If you target for what you have in the company today you limit what the company can do tomorrow or you may massively increase the costs of a future change because of a short sighted and non-strategic decision you made yesterday.
Re: (Score:3)
High level declarative API. You don't get into the weeds of the platform.
As an occasional casual mobile developer, I will choose Flutter even if I need only Android support, because I don't have to keep up with too much platform specific stuff. If in the future, I need to develop another app on a different platform, the same skill investment will carry over. I don't want to keep up with 5 platform specific tools. I am not paid to make commercial apps.
If you want to provide a high quality native experience a
Re: (Score:2)
I really like this philosophy of design, it focuses on the user first, and gets the job done with a minimum of fuss and expense. I'd rank the design goals of software like this:
1. The user's needs come first.
2. Start simple, stay elegant.
3. Assume constant change.
4. Leverage, leverage, leverage.
I could probably write a chapter on each of these. Point #1 alone could be an entire book, and the very first chapter would be "STOP! DON'T CHANGE THAT UI JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE!"
The programming language is 'Dart'... (Score:3)
Dart appears to resemble C++, although strings are quoted using apostrophes instead of quotation marks, for some demented reason.
I am modestly interested but, this is the first I've heard of either Dart or Flutter (really? 'Flutter'?), which suggests it's still a weirdo niche language. Also, coming from Google, I expect the project to be canceled at any random time.
Re: (Score:3)
Dart exists since a decade and Flutter minimum 5 years, if not longer.
There are over 500,000 apps written in Dart, and plenty of big business has its main code base in Dart.
Dart resembles more Java/javaScript or Swift.
Re: The programming language is 'Dart'... (Score:2)
Whatever happened to go? I thought that was Google's new language of choice
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever happened to go?
It went.
It's actually still around but it's worth noting that Google actually has an app called Go, and then they have a language called Go, it's shitty names all the way down.
Re: (Score:2)
Go is more of a server/headless thing. Doing user-facing stuff that Dart does in Go is just self-inflicted suffering. Even plain web (ie templates, MVC and all that) is just so-so.
In classic Google fashion, there's also Jetpack Compose - a java/kotlin thing, for a change. This one doesn't bring entire rendering engine along for the ride.
But if easy to use immediate mode UI is all you want in Go, there's https://git.sr.ht/~eliasnaur/g... [git.sr.ht] which works more or less the same way as Flutter does, with all pros an
Re: (Score:3)
I can give the reason, I won't comment as to whether it's demented or not ;)
Dart allows ' or " for strings; the only difference is the necessary: that inside ' you must escape ', and inside " you must escape ".
Early on a preference emerged for ', I think for two reasons: it's easier to type on the US keyboard, and early Dart was predominantely for web, which meant it was convenient to be able to have most HTML in strings without escaping it.
Because there were two options, though, discussion about quotes was
Flutter and particularly Dart are noteworthy. (Score:3)
I've been eyeing Dart ever since it came out. It sold itself as yet another language in the JS/V8/Node Space, because they launched straight with a transpiler for JS. However, it appears to be intended for its own VM that has some neat features. Concurrency f.i. is as trivial as it gets with Dart. IIRC there's a inner API function called compute(...). You pass a function and a callback into it and the Dart VM runs that on the core that currently has the least load. Nice. Simple and straightforward. Concurrency for those lazy asses that don't want to wreck their brain doing it. Like me. Staying pure functional seems to be a piece of cake too if that's your thing.
Flutter hat me curious for completely different reason right from the get-go: It stepped into my attention as one of those technologies that could potentially fill the gap that Flash/AS left. ... And, yes, Flash/AS did leave a gap, stop the jokes. Flutter didn't team up with Dart right away but somehow these two Google Teams found together and the Dart crew must've thought "OK, if no one else is using our PL we might aswell marry us to this promising rich client project and make it happen". It looked a little desperate when Flutter and Dart started appearing together but I have to say they did pull through in the 10 years they've been around now. Flutter and Dart have by now have overtaken every other cross-plattform client app solution out there and they're still picking up momentum!
This is nice to observe also because you get somewhat clueless web-hipsters diving into a notably academic and pure-functional capable modern PL and suddenly scraping territories like algebrahic software development ususally reserved for the old and smelly Scheme and LISP crowd. Interesting to observe.
I'm a *very* conservative web and rich client developer, by the standard of this band of crazy hippsters and clueless webdev puppies at least, but Flutter and Dart have made it into the top 3 of my very carefully vetted technologies that getting into seriously on a professional level might be justifiable. By now I'd bet money on this duo, they are here to stay for a while.
If you're looking for a new playground that touches bases with the flashy UI/UX camp and offers a feasible solution to develop total-cross-plattform development across mobile and desktop systems without lugging about any webview hacks or 10x GB V8/Chrome/Blink/Electron environments for each little app, do look into Dart & Flutter. Android Studio and the Flutter SDK fit like a glove and you can get into profession x-platform development within the hour
Highly recommended from yours truly.
Re: (Score:1)