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Flutter – A mobile app SDK for iOS and Android
- grey-area 9y agoAnyone using this and have experiences to report? I'm thinking of using it for a project soon. Specifically, how does it compare with 2x native apps for Android and iOS. How was Dart as a language, and the bindings to different native SDKs? What problems did you encounter when building apps on both platforms?
- netdur 9y agoI'm a consultant & I have recommended Flutter for third app now, business owners love it, specially love that they don't have to maintain two separated code bases for a single app and getting ride of buggy, slow hybrid solutions. None of programmers knew what is dart / reactive, we did fast sessions learning by using ES6 and react, once that (and state management) is understood we switched to dart and programmers found it very similar and fun... however, some programmers said they have understood state but they didn't, made naive mistakes and app worked well anyway, tests couldn't catch them, my code review did. Android programmers couldn't believe hot reload button, very welcome upgrade of gradle, they don't like how UI is built (used to xml), I agree it is confusing nesting all those functions, you have to wrap your mind around it, I believe introducing XML or JSX to flutter would be a mistake. The only complains is third part plugins, we had to drop Flutter where ads or some third plugins is a must. Flutter is not a complete solution, you still have to write some android / ios code to make your app works well.
- jswizzy 9y agoI haven't done enough with Flutter to really report on it but I like it better than React and Android's API so far. I do feel comfortable enough with Dart to say that it is very familiar and easy to pick up. It's Java syntax mostly with modern features and much less boilerplate code. The concurrency model is the same one you find in distributed languages like Erlang, Golang, and Akka Java or Scala. The bad parts of Dart have nothing to do with the language. Oh, and functions are first-class citizens which is my biggest gripe with Java.
- suzuki 9y ago> It's Java syntax mostly with modern features and much less boilerplate code. Exactly. Dart is a sort of rational and modern variant of Java/C# language family. It is excellent in handling async/await. I find Dart Code extension for Visual Studio Code fairly useful for developing Flutter. Dart Code as well as IntelliJ supports for flutter hot reload. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DanTup.dart-code https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DanTup.d...
- PascalW 9y agoThis looks pretty neat, Dart is a nice language. Flutter looks pretty different from React Native on one side and Cordova/webview based frameworks on the other side. Flutter is not based on webviews, but is also not using the native widgets but instead rendering custom widgets. To me, this is a little weird. One of the downsides of Webview based apps is that it's harder to align with the native OS look and feel. React Native solves this problem, but Flutter clearly has the same problem.
- Eridrus 9y ago> One of the downsides of Webview based apps is that it's harder to align with the native OS look and feel. Is this really a problem though? It doesn't seem crazy to want your app to just look the same on all platforms.
- Grustaf 9y agoNo, it doesn't seem crazy, but it's also not really what users want. Android users probably expect native Android behaviour, iOS users definitely expect native iOS widgets, anything else will feel quite off.
- vegasje 9y agoThis is very true when it comes to consumer apps, but in our experience businesses prefer a more unified experience for their users--it minimizes the training effort.
- zerkten 9y agoI guess it depends on the app. Google's own apps on iOS don't strike me as feeling very native. I would think they'll get closer to nailing the Android behaviour. In a way these toolkits fill a space like Electron on the desktop where the developer won't, or can't, for all in on a native experience. As someone who built some mobile apps with web technology I can see how Flutter would have an appeal because going into the project you've already given up on the native experience. There are still (unfortunately?) a world of marketing-driven apps with the brand overriding design choices which would be suited to this. Tools like Xamarin probably have a lead for line-of-business apps inside companies due to the MS ecosystem integration, but I could see people choosing Flutter for these apps if it's easy to build and maintain apps. None of this changes the fact that for best-of-breed apps in a public store you'll need to use the native toolkits.
- ziggzagg 9y agoWhy is that Flutter does not have a web target? Everything is nice and fast about it, it's a shame that after building a cross mobile apps, you'll app to start the web app from scratch using another platform.
- Mayzie 9y agoReact Native doesn't either. Only via the third-party React Native Web project[1]. Which I'm sure something similar for Flutter can also be achieved if desired. [1] - https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web
- netdur 9y agoI have very good experience writing UIs in HTML's canvas, look at my repos https://github.com/netdur?tab=repositories https://github.com/netdur?tab=repositories I say porting Flutter to web using canvas (both have similar APIs) is very bad idea. this repo closes the gap in sane way https://github.com/yjbanov/butterfly https://github.com/yjbanov/butterfly
- unkown-unknowns 9y agoI don't understand what you mean. Please explain.
- owaislone 9y agoWhile it does not right now and I doubt the team ever will do that, it is open source. I'm sure the team will accept meaningful contributions. A meaningful contribution here could be to make the flutter backend system pluggable enough that 3rd party backends can be used without modifying core. Then a web, desktop or any other backend can be implemented outside of it. I know for a fast that the core team is open to the idea of creating desktop backends but does not have the resources to do it. They'll gladly accept any contributions towards that.
- ziggzagg 9y agoMy point is the web frontend target is such an obvious one here. Specially given the dart to javascript compiler history.
- john255 9y agouseless
- natch 9y agoFrom the FAQ: >We are aware of apps built with Flutter that have been reviewed and released via the App Store. Which apps? I'd like to try them out and see how they look and feel.
- tacomonstrous 9y agoThe Hamilton app seems to be an example: https://www.blog.google/topics/developers/it-must-be-nice-have-hamilton-your-phone/ https://www.blog.google/topics/developers/it-must-be-nice-ha...
- Skylled 9y agoNewsvoice is another
- malkia 9y agoI use it now for my news reader, mainly because it was written in flutter, and I wanted to get a feeling as an user how it does it. It works well on my Android Pixel XL, haven't tried it on iOS yet. Also it works on ChromeBook... throuh ARC - there were some glitches, but after the recent updates (in ARC itself) I haven't seen them. Actually scrolling might be still broken (but again this was something ARC is responsible, as other Android apps on Chrome are broken the same way).
- jswizzy 9y agothanks
- victor106 9y agoXamarin.Forms is another option to consider in this space.
- mk89 9y agoLooks really promising!
- thinbeige 9y agoNowadays the issue with app devlopment is not only having two OSes two develop for (and I doubt that Flutter is a real help here), the much bigger problem is user acquisition. User acquisition got so insanely expensive for apps that there are few to none business models where you can justify or break even the user acquisition costs.
- DJN 9y agoI wish I could upvote this twice. Distribution is the biggest problem in mobile. I'll add that even after acquiring a user, engagement, apathy, and not being a 24-hour uninstall statistic are close seconds. I'm working on a solution that's currently in private beta but it should be in public beta in a few weeks.
- pjmlp 9y agoIt is no different than anywhere else, there are tons of web sites and packaged software to chose from. The only thing is that the gold rush of the app stores is gone.
- thinbeige 9y agoI disagree. Yes the web is also competitive but it's 100x easier for a simple reason: The next site ia just ONE single click away. The next app is few clicks and a download away, even without any sign-up, an app install is a gigantic conversion breaker. This is not comparable with websites at all. Anyone who does new apps in 2017 must have a good plan.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 9y agoI don't agree, just because it is a click away don't mean the user stays long enough, does anything meaningful or even returns.
- sathis 9y agoThe real downside of using flutter is that you can't embed (or inline) any native widgets like video or maps.
- grey-area 9y agoThanks. This would be a blocker for me so it's good to know. They have an issue open on it, but no progress so far it looks like: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/73 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/73 An awful lot of apps use a map, and a static map in many cases isn't going to be enough. Likewise many apps will want to display video. Looks like they also have an issue open for webview support, which could be a problem too: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/730 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/730 But then I found this, so perhaps there is hope if you can launch it in a new view: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/tree/master/examples/platform_view https://github.com/flutter/flutter/tree/master/examples/plat... Looks like you could do the same for any view, so it's more that you can't have a subview which is a map or video etc, which isn't such a bad limitation (not ideal, but at least it's not impossible).
- saintfiends 9y agoThis is one of the blockers for me as well. It can't embed web pages inside Flutter widgets.
- sethladd 9y ago(disclaimer: I work on Flutter.) Hi, thanks for the feedback! Would you be willing to "thumbs up" this issue? https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/73 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/73 It helps us when triaging. Thank you!
- devdoomari 9y agoI'll jump to flutter when 1). scala supports dart backend (just my preference) 2). flutter solves 'calling native libraries/sdks' better. (current 'message passing' seems so weak - I want to do video processing/etc) but for other use cases, flutter seems nice (for 90% of app use cases?)
- Numberwang 9y agoDesktop browser support would be nice too
- Timothycquinn 9y agoThis would be lower priority than Tablet so we will have to wait some time until we see any desktop app support. Even Dartlang does not have OOTB desktop app development support. However, I have conceived ways of hacking up a Dart desktop app using Electron / Dartium.
- mwcampbell 9y agoThe FAQ says Flutter has basic accessibility support. I wonder what's missing. If there's a Flutter-based app on the iOS App Store that uses some non-trivial widgets, I'd like to try it out with VoiceOver.
- yorwba 9y agohttps://flutter.io/faq/#who-uses-flutter https://flutter.io/faq/#who-uses-flutter mentions Newsvoice https://itunes.apple.com/app/newsvoice/id1208421834 https://itunes.apple.com/app/newsvoice/id1208421834 which looks like it would use some non-trivial widgets.
- zanalyzer 9y agoFlutter is also the name of a company doing vision based gesture UI that Google bought in 2013 and hasn't been heard of since. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flutter_(company) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flutter_(company)
- RyanShook 9y agoReact Native vs Flutter https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/flutter-dev/49DpZm0xbNk/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/flutter-dev/49DpZm0x...
- JamesSwift 9y ago> We test on a variety of low-end to high-end phones (excluding tablets) but we don’t yet have an official device compatibility guarantee. We do not offer support for tablets or have tablet-aware layouts. Thats a pretty serious, and surprising, limitation.
- gman83 9y agoAs far as I can tell, it's just something that will be added eventually. Given that Fuchsia OS applications are written in Flutter, and Fuchsia is meant for all form-factors -- phone/tablet/desktop, this is clearly something that is eventually going to be required.
- valuearb 9y agoSo eventually it will be usable.
- JamesSwift 9y agoIn my experience with app development, having worked on multiple handset-to-tablet conversions as well as universal-upfront projects, it is a bear to add tablet in after the fact when it wasn't considered upfront. And the opposite is also true, that if you do both along side one another, it really isn't that bad. I guess I'm just surprised they would be willing to tackle cross platform upfront (ios/android) but not cross form-factor (handset/tablet).
- rhubarbcustard 9y agoDo you think this is a better option than Apache Cordova? I've been starting to look at Cordova to build some pretty simple apps for business applications. Does anyone have an opinion on whether Flutter would be a better choice? Why? I also looked at Xamarin but that seems a little in-depth for what I need, which is basically some data-input screens (using standard Web-style controls) and then to upload the data to an API.
- jdiaz5513 9y agoGo for it, as long as the app will always be simple and you don't have a high bar for the UX. Both Angular and React work well with Cordova and it's a great way to leverage existing web dev talent. Make sure that the Cordova APIs/plugins cover everything you need, because writing custom plugins can be a major pain. You won't have a lot of performance headroom, especially on Android where some unsolved V8 bugs and inconsistent GPU support on older devices will hold you back. If things start to feel slow and it's a problem for the customer you may need to look elsewhere.
- 0xbear 9y agoStop trying to make Dart happen. It's not going to happen.
- tomerbd 9y agoif it supported web site as well i would have clicked the link and check it out.
- Timothycquinn 9y agoIf you mean Web Development then you need to look at just Dart which is the foundation of Flutter without the widgets, UI and Web platform sugar.