What is Flutter?

Flutter is a mobile application framework developed by Google. It was released in 2017 and is based on Dart programming language. Flutter makes use of native widgets and provides a smooth user experience.

It's a cross-platform technology that works across Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, Windows, etc.

Flutter apps are written using the same codebase and run on any platform supported by the underlying operating system. Flutter apps have been designed to work well on both smartphones and tablets.

How does Flutter work?

Flutter relies on a “ breeze engine” which helps to control the animations and UI.

The breeze engine has been specifically designed for mobile devices and has been “widely used in popular mobile games and apps such as Alto’s Adventure and Pokémon GO.”

There are a number of advantages to using the breeze engine in Flutter apps such as its speed and its ability to handle large apps. It also makes it possible to create cross-platform apps.

Flutter Components

1. Flutter SDK

The Flutter SDK (Software Development Kit) is a set of tools and libraries that allow developers to build Flutter applications. It includes a compiler, debugger, emulator, and documentation. The SDK is built on top of the Dart programming language.

2. Flutter Gallery

The Flutter Gallery is a repository of prebuilt components for Flutter apps. These components are categorized under different categories including UI Components, Widgets, Icons, Animations, and others. You can browse these components and download them directly from the gallery.

3. Flutter Inspector

The Flutter Inspector is an integrated tool for debugging Flutter apps. It helps you find errors in your code and gives you insights into how your app runs at runtime. It comes bundled with the Flutter SDK.

4. Flutter Plugins

A plugin is a piece of software that extends the functionality of Flutter. There are many plugins available for Flutter. You can search for plugins online or install them manually.

5. Flutter Webview

Flutter Webview is a widget that lets you embed web content inside your Flutter app. You can add a URL to the web view and load the page in your app.

6. Flutter Analytics

Flutter Analytics is a library that helps you track events in your app. It supports tracking events such as button clicks, scroll position, and more.

What has been the response of Developers?

Now you might be wondering what reception has Flutter received among the developer community?

More than 2 million app developers have been utilizing Flutter’s Software Development Kit since 2018 for developing not only consumer apps but also enterprise applications.

According to a survey by Statista, in 2020, 30% of developers chose Flutter for App development. Whereas in 2021, this number grew to 39% and is expected to grow further over the coming years.

Why is Flutter growing in popularity?

According to a survey conducted by Jet Brains, 43% of app developers are involved in cross-platform app development.

Businesses are looking to deploy their apps across multiple devices, which would save them time, and costs and reduce the need of assigning different teams to different platforms.

This is where Flutter has provided a powerful solution to these businesses. Flutter has already gained a lot of traction in the developer community due to its powerful capabilities, but there’s still plenty of potential for it to grow even further.

We will take a look at certain advantages Flutter promises that will keep it relevant over the coming years:

Cross-Platform Advantage

Flutter enables cross-platform app development. It gives developers an easy way to build and deploy visually appealing, natively-compiled mobile (both Android and iOS), web, and desktop using the same codebase. Flutter allows your app development teams to work in cohesion.

When building apps natively, you would need separate teams working on Android and iOS. However, with Flutter, you do not need segregated teams for both platforms as developers can build apps using the codebase. This allows you to organize your teams around app features instead of platforms.

Develop highly responsive apps

Flutter is a mobile development framework that is making waves in the world of app development.

Flutter is different from other mobile development frameworks in that it takes user input more seriously.

It is designed specifically for developing apps that are highly interactive and rapid. Flutter apps are also more responsive and faster.

Why is this important? For a start, responsiveness is incredibly important when it comes to mobile devices. Users are impatient and want their apps to work quickly and efficiently.

Additionally, Flutter apps tend to be more engaging because they are designed to be interactive and fun. This means that users will spend more time using them and this ultimately leads to increased revenue.

Flutter, unlike React Native, does not require bridges between code and native elements and can be compiled directly into native code.

This reduces processing times and makes the app faster. The Skia Graphics Library smoothly also delivers 60 frames per second.

Excellent User Interface

Flutter makes developing UI/UXapps very simple compared to other mainstream development platforms like iOS or Android. This allows you to focus on what matters most - creating an awesome app! User-friendly designs:

Flutter has its own set of custom widgets, rendered and managed by the framework’s graphics engine. This makes it easier for the user to customize and create their own widgets.

Flutter is ideal for creating visually appealing mobile app interfaces and a great user experience. Creating UIs from the most basic to more complex interfaces with multiple components is almost effortless with Flutter.

Hot Reloading

A hot reload is a great functionality present in a flutter. It is the easiest and the fastest function that helps you apply changes, fix bugs, create UIs, and add features.

It takes approximately one second to perform its functionality. In hot reload it does not destroy the preserved state.

Hot reloading’ (faster development) means that developers can make changes to the code on the go and it will take only milliseconds for the changes to display. This makes bug resolution and experimentation easier.

Flutter Web is growing

There are a number of reasons why Flutter is a good choice for web development. Flutter apps are “much faster” than traditional web apps. This is due to the use of the LOD rendering and the ease of use of the platform.

Flutter also has a “host of features that web developers are accustomed to, such as hot reloading, widgets, and routing.”

This makes it easy to transition between developing Flutter apps and traditional web apps. Flutter also has “a rich platform library” which means that it is possible to create apps that look and feel like traditional apps.

Easy to learn Dart

Flutter is based on Dart language, a general-purpose object-oriented programming language. The latest version Dart 2.17 was released at the recently concluded Google I/O.

It is a modern object-oriented language this is very easy for developers familiar with C++, Python, or Java since these languages share similar syntax.

Is the future for Flutter bright?

Flutter’s release was announced in 2017 and there was an air of uncertainty regarding its future, considering the prevalence of other popular cross-platform frameworks.

However, within five years, Flutter has proved itself to be the leading toolkit, boasting over 1 million apps built around it.

At this year’s I/O, Flutter featured alongside premium Google Products like Android and Chrome, which is indicative of not only Google’s increasing focus on it but also the popularity and success that Flutter has enjoyed, emerging as the tech giant’s premier product.

Flutter 1.0 was released in December 2018, which supported only Android and iOS devices. Flutter 2.0, released in March 2021, brought in a set of changes including Web Support across all platforms, Desktop Support, Memory Allocation tools, and Sound Null Safety for Dart.

In May 2022, the release of Flutter 3.0 and Dart 2.17 was announced simultaneously. These updates included Desktop Support for macOS and Linux, making Flutter available across six platforms:

• iOS

• Android

• Windows

• macOS

• Linux

• Web

Some other additions to the Flutter framework included Material Design 3, International Text Input Support, Foldable Phone Support, Casual Games Toolkit, and Increased Firebase backend support.

You can see how far Flutter has come from being a tool considered limited to mobile app development to making inroads in desktop support.

Hence it is safe to say that not only is Flutter increasing in popularity, but it is also here to stay!