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How does Flutter fit in with PWAs? From a high level they both seem to do the same thing: cross-platform mobile application platforms.

by deeg 9y ago

ElijahLynn 9y ago
Was wondering the same thing. Seems like a stop-gap solution for now until PWAs really hit their stride in a couple of years. PWAs are still missing a few features on some of the platforms, but hey Safari just now finally announced Service Worker support.
- solarkraft 9y ago
  While PWAs make decent use of the lowest common denominator (browser), it comes at a gigantic complexity cost impacting both development ease and performance. Flutter is trying to get modern concepts delivered without towing along antiquated/unneeded technology. I'd personally be very happy with "compatibility" support of Flutter for the web, which seems to be quite easy (and performant) with wasm+opengl.
jrs95 9y ago
I'd imagine it's mostly a performance thing. It also seems like Google is aiming to use this to help get more apps on Fuchsia as well. It may end up becoming the preferred method of making new apps on Android.
- deeg 9y ago
  That would seem to indicate that--at least from Google's view--PWAs are a dead-end solution. I guess I can stop going through the PWA tutorials.
  - solarkraft 9y ago
    To me it indicates that they still differentiate between web and native - which I find reasonable, at least in performance terms. PWAs will likely further rise in popularity and be very practical for good cross-platform support and ease of delivery - Flutter won't change that in the short term. In the long term, maybe it will.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Well, unless the performance characteristics of PWAs are going to be much different than that of Electron apps, I would stick to native personally.
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    I don't think Google has a view: go to Google I/O, you'll find in one room the Chrome team harking at how PWAs are the future of mobile apps, and in the next room the Android team harking at how their new features solidify their advantage. There's no coherent view as to what they want mobile to be, just teams pushing their own things.
sseth 9y ago
The performance difference for one thing - this comes not only from not using javascript, but also from the fact that there is no DOM to update and has been designed from the beginning to maximize use of the GPU.
isoos 9y ago
PWAs are far from being cross-platform mobile apps, Flutter (or React Native) is much better for that. Dart has PWA support, see https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/pwa https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/pwa
jaxondu 9y ago
I see Flutter the same as in React Native and Xamarin, cross platform mobile UI framework that provides native feel. PWA is an attempt to make web apps/sites work as well as native, web app/site by default is "cross platform". Google is not going to replace PWA with Flutter or vice versa. Just two groups within Google with different ideas on PWA vs native dev. Similar to GMail vs Inbox, Polymer vs Angular Elements, Go vs Dart, Allo vs Hangouts etc.

How does Flutter fit in with PWAs? From a high level they both seem to do the same thing: cross-platform mobile application platforms.

by deeg 9y ago

How does Flutter fit in with PWAs? From a high level they both seem to do the same thing: cross-platform mobile application platforms.

ElijahLynn 9y ago

Was wondering the same thing. Seems like a stop-gap solution for now until PWAs really hit their stride in a couple of years. PWAs are still missing a few features on some of the platforms, but hey Safari just now finally announced Service Worker support.

solarkraft 9y ago
While PWAs make decent use of the lowest common denominator (browser), it comes at a gigantic complexity cost impacting both development ease and performance. Flutter is trying to get modern concepts delivered without towing along antiquated/unneeded technology. I'd personally be very happy with "compatibility" support of Flutter for the web, which seems to be quite easy (and performant) with wasm+opengl.

jrs95 9y ago

I'd imagine it's mostly a performance thing. It also seems like Google is aiming to use this to help get more apps on Fuchsia as well. It may end up becoming the preferred method of making new apps on Android.

deeg 9y ago
That would seem to indicate that--at least from Google's view--PWAs are a dead-end solution. I guess I can stop going through the PWA tutorials.
- solarkraft 9y ago
  To me it indicates that they still differentiate between web and native - which I find reasonable, at least in performance terms. PWAs will likely further rise in popularity and be very practical for good cross-platform support and ease of delivery - Flutter won't change that in the short term. In the long term, maybe it will.
- jrs95 9y ago
  Well, unless the performance characteristics of PWAs are going to be much different than that of Electron apps, I would stick to native personally.
- gsnedders 9y ago
  I don't think Google has a view: go to Google I/O, you'll find in one room the Chrome team harking at how PWAs are the future of mobile apps, and in the next room the Android team harking at how their new features solidify their advantage. There's no coherent view as to what they want mobile to be, just teams pushing their own things.

sseth 9y ago

The performance difference for one thing - this comes not only from not using javascript, but also from the fact that there is no DOM to update and has been designed from the beginning to maximize use of the GPU.

isoos 9y ago

PWAs are far from being cross-platform mobile apps, Flutter (or React Native) is much better for that. Dart has PWA support, see https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/pwa https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/pwa

jaxondu 9y ago

I see Flutter the same as in React Native and Xamarin, cross platform mobile UI framework that provides native feel. PWA is an attempt to make web apps/sites work as well as native, web app/site by default is "cross platform". Google is not going to replace PWA with Flutter or vice versa. Just two groups within Google with different ideas on PWA vs native dev. Similar to GMail vs Inbox, Polymer vs Angular Elements, Go vs Dart, Allo vs Hangouts etc.