Why you should consider using Flutter for your next projects
If you are a mobile or software developer, you might hear about Flutter. Flutter is a cross-platform framework that enables developers to create and deploy visually attractive, high performance-oriented applications on both Android and iOS. Flutter possesses a number of features that have never been seen before in a cross-platform environment, based on Dart, the in-house Google Programming Language. Besides being perfect for cross-platform growth, Flutter is also ideal for startups that operate on a budget for these following reasons:
Flutter breaks traditional limitations of cross-platform approaches
With Flutter, you not only have the advantage of a “write once” approach, but you also create a high performance, “native” experience because a Flutter App is an Ahead Of Time compiled, machine binary executable. Thanks to the cross-platform approaches, it overcomes normal challenges that other languages usually contain.
Productivity increases by 10 times
This increase in productivity comes from Flutter’s “hot reload” which allows developers to see changes they make to an app in less than one second; and changes to the app structure in less than ten.
There’s no need to run another build on both iOS and Android. Moreover, this is often very easy to master since the “hot reload” happens every time you save. However, the advantages are vital. Development time is often reduced by 30–40% because the rebuild times that slow developers down typically take longer with every modification being applied.
Android and iOS app(and probably web, PC app) with a single code base
The same code source can be built and used on various platforms. This helps the development of software faster, reduces time used to write code, fix bugs as well as maintenance. Although Flutter for website is still beta, it is promising to be a bright candidate for website and PC apps development.
In Flutter projects we are developing at Nextfunc, coders barely need to write distinguished code for different platforms.
It’s designed to empower you to think outside the box
Due to the Material design specification, it’s easy to create powerful UI experiences. The new release produces smooth experience that is often seen on native applications only. Flutter has widgets that implement the Human Interface Design specifications for iOS (Cupertino style), allowing users to get that native “feel” on iPhone and iPad as well.
Extensive catalog of open source packages
The large set of open source packages available helps you create apps faster and easier. Although still relatively young, the package library is expanding every day owing to the abundant and passionate developers actively contributing to Flutter.
Straightforward integration with Firebase
Firebase provides outside support for a collection of services such as cloud storage, cloud functions, real-time databases, hosting, authentication, etc, which reduce time and resources used to build backends. It’s also straightforward to be combined with tools for automating development and release processes like Fastlane for Continuous Delivery.
Flutter has support for a variety of IDEs
Flutter allows you to choose from a number of Integrated Development Environments. In Flutter Live, VS Code is used. It is lightweight and much faster and has most of the features available in Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA.
UI Compliance — Everything is a Widget
In Flutter, everything is a widget, the App bar, Drawer, Snackbar, Scaffold, etc. It’s easy to wrap one Widget inside another to give this to do things like center something, by wrapping it in a Center Widget. This helps users have good experience, no matter what platform they’re running on.
Different themes for Android/iOS
Flutte uses a ternary to check which platform the user is running on and allows their UI to make run-time decisions about which UI components to use.
Continuous integration using Code Magic and/or Github Actions
Code magic is an open-source tool featured in Flutter Live on December 4th, 2018. It’s a highly sophisticated CI tool, optimized specifically for Flutter. Code magic makes build processes seamless.
At Nextfunc, we also use Github Actions to automate our Flutter development workflows. We save a lot of time so far, and thus the team has more time to enjoy their hobbies when the machines do the tasks.
Animations are easy, even easier using 2Dimensions Flare
Flutter provides numerous built-in animated widgets such as AnimatedContainer, AnimatedSize, AnimatedPosition, Hero… Even when you want to build the animation yourself, it is also very easy by using Animation, AnimationController, Curves.
Flare animation was introduced during Flutter live 2018, this amazing online tool can be used to create extraordinary UI or animations. It bridges the gap between the UI designer and the developer, reducing the time required to apply UI or animation related changes.
Flutter on desktop and the web
Flutter team now has prototype Flutter apps working in a web browser. In the previously Top Secret project, “Hummingbird” was unveiled to the world during Flutter Live, which is a promise for using the same code to create apps for mobile, desktop and the web with ease.
Flutter is good, but it’s not completely perfect
Like any other cross-platform frameworks, Flutter has its own drawbacks:
- Our developers sometimes have to upgrade, downgrade the Flutter version to make the build work. The same source code can work with a few Flutter versions but the others.
- 5000+ issues are still there on Github, you may face one or more issues in that list some day.
- Sometimes the knowledge of native development is required to solve the issues with native parts (Ex: gradle on Android, pod on iOS, native config for notification…)
Conclusion
There is no perfect framework, you can consider using one framework over the others. But with above advantages, Flutter is worth to be considered as the top candidate for your next mobile products (and probably web, PC products in the future). At Nextfunc, we have developed many mobile apps using Flutter and our clients are very happy with the outputs. And more important, our developers are now really happy when they have more time to learn new things and spend more time with their families and their hobbies. Thanks Google and the community for bringing Flutter to our life.
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ABOUT NEXTFUNC:
Nextfunc is a software development outsourcing company specialized in delivering services and solutions for web, mobile apps using native SDK and cross-platform frameworks. As we are living in such an ever-evolving world, our team truly understand the frequent changes in the needs and demands of our customers. With a team full of young yet talented specialists, we are here to provide customers across the globe with the best cutting-edge technologies.
