PPP#1: What’s up with Flutter?
If you have watched any footage of the recent Google I/O’s, you’ve probably heard of Flutter. It’s Google’s answer to React Native, a framework to write apps for IOS, Android and since this may, also the web. But why should you give Flutter a shot?
It’s fast.
Flutter has been proven to be faster than other cross-platform frameworks, since it doesn’t rely on intermediate code representation, such as a JS-bridge in React Native. A Flutter application is built directly into the machine code, which eliminates any performance bugs of the interpretation process.
Another aspect where Flutter seems to be faster is the reduced development time. Flutter has support for Hot Reload, which smoothens out the development process a ton.
Darts?
The language used in Flutter is called Dart. Luckily, it shares a lot of the same conventions as Javascript so it *should* be a smooth proces for web developers to have a go at building a Flutter app.
Look at all those widgets
Flutter uses Widgets. These are pretty customisable pieces of code that are mostly available both in the IOS and Android design language.
Animation is key
During the development of Flutter, the team focused heavily on delivering a smooth UI experience. There are a bunch built in animations that you can use on your widgets aswel as support for a plugin called ‘Flare’.
Flare is an animation tool made by 2Dimensions to create beautiful transitions, onboardings, icons … You name it! All the animations are rendered in real time, so you can edit your animations and immediately see the result on the screen.
Also, it’s free to use!
Ready for the future
Currently, Flutter can be used to write IOS, Android and Web apps, but that could change in the future. Google has been hinting their new OS, codenamed ‘Fuchsia’, for a long time now. Although Google has been pretty secretive about the whole project, experts believe it will be a huge deal for current devices aswel as future IoT devices.
