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The Flutter web port is ridiculous. It circumvents the entire point of a Web page as it's literally just a canvas on the Web page. You lose all advantages that

by gitgud 6y ago

The Flutter web port is ridiculous. It circumvents the entire point of a Web page as it's literally just a canvas on the Web page. You lose all advantages that HTML and CSS gives you, links, styling, accessibility, text selection! ... It's basically a flash website... Which admittedly is okay for some applications

_bxg1 6y ago
It's Flash all over again, with a fresh coat of paint.
contextfree 6y ago
Isn't this consistent with Flutter's approach in general, though? On iOS, Android, etc., it uses its own widget toolkit and does its own rendering, it's not a wrapper over the native toolkits and renderers.
exacube 6y ago
You might be misinformed; according to https://medium.com/flutter/hummingbird-building-flutter-for-the-web-e687c2a023a8 https://medium.com/flutter/hummingbird-building-flutter-for-... Flutter for Web uses HTML & CSS where it can, and falls back to Canvas where it can't. Flutter for Web is still on Beta, so lets see where it lands. Today, it seems to implement some PWA practices and lazyloading to try and get some performance.
- gitgud 6y ago
  Well that article is from 2018 and kind of overemphasises the HTML and CSS where it can. Checkout the official [1] Flutter web demos. Even the simplest [2] example renders basically every part of the UI (including text!!) within canvas elements, which is a bit crazy to me... but yes it's still Beta, so we'll see what they can improve [1] https://flutter.github.io/samples/#?platform=web https://flutter.github.io/samples/#?platform=web [2] https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/animations/#/ https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/animations/#/
  - Klathmon 6y ago
    Wow that's pretty insane. I can't select any text on any of those examples, I can't open anything in a new tab, and I can't save any images.
    - wiradikusuma 6y ago
      For some web app, that's a feature
  - Yabood 6y ago
    I wonder how SEO is handled for web applications built with Flutter since its mostly canvas.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    They also create a thousand webcomponent wrappers to display this.
  - akie 6y ago
    I got a big grey screen on the first three I clicked. Not sure if this is ready for prime time...
dgentile 6y ago
Is it WebGL?
duxup 6y ago
I only did some reading about Flutter for web and I kept thinking "Wait ... is this the web anymore then?" Admittedly I need to go back and check but it was confusing and worrisome.
zubnix 6y ago
Not sure what browser you're using. But here it's actually using webcomponents and CSS houdini to render all demos I tried. Nowhere did I see any canvas usage.
monocularvision 6y ago
I look forward to the day when the folks that shout the benefits of Electron desktop development start screaming over Flutter ruining the web because “it ignores everything that’s good in the browser!”

by gitgud 6y ago

_bxg1 6y ago

It's Flash all over again, with a fresh coat of paint.

contextfree 6y ago

Isn't this consistent with Flutter's approach in general, though? On iOS, Android, etc., it uses its own widget toolkit and does its own rendering, it's not a wrapper over the native toolkits and renderers.

exacube 6y ago

You might be misinformed; according to https://medium.com/flutter/hummingbird-building-flutter-for-the-web-e687c2a023a8 https://medium.com/flutter/hummingbird-building-flutter-for-... Flutter for Web uses HTML & CSS where it can, and falls back to Canvas where it can't. Flutter for Web is still on Beta, so lets see where it lands. Today, it seems to implement some PWA practices and lazyloading to try and get some performance.

gitgud 6y ago
Well that article is from 2018 and kind of overemphasises the HTML and CSS where it can. Checkout the official [1] Flutter web demos. Even the simplest [2] example renders basically every part of the UI (including text!!) within canvas elements, which is a bit crazy to me... but yes it's still Beta, so we'll see what they can improve [1] https://flutter.github.io/samples/#?platform=web https://flutter.github.io/samples/#?platform=web [2] https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/animations/#/ https://flutter.github.io/samples/web/animations/#/
- Klathmon 6y ago
  Wow that's pretty insane. I can't select any text on any of those examples, I can't open anything in a new tab, and I can't save any images.
  - wiradikusuma 6y ago
    For some web app, that's a feature
- Yabood 6y ago
  I wonder how SEO is handled for web applications built with Flutter since its mostly canvas.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  They also create a thousand webcomponent wrappers to display this.
- akie 6y ago
  I got a big grey screen on the first three I clicked. Not sure if this is ready for prime time...

dgentile 6y ago

Is it WebGL?

duxup 6y ago

I only did some reading about Flutter for web and I kept thinking "Wait ... is this the web anymore then?" Admittedly I need to go back and check but it was confusing and worrisome.

zubnix 6y ago

Not sure what browser you're using. But here it's actually using webcomponents and CSS houdini to render all demos I tried. Nowhere did I see any canvas usage.

monocularvision 6y ago

I look forward to the day when the folks that shout the benefits of Electron desktop development start screaming over Flutter ruining the web because “it ignores everything that’s good in the browser!”