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I don't think any person, even remotely, concerned about the open web / accessibility / building decent user experiences ever considered Flutter Web as a viable

I don't think any person, even remotely, concerned about the open web / accessibility / building decent user experiences ever considered Flutter Web as a viable option for developing web apps. The only people I've EVER heard talk positively about this is Google & other Flutter Developers that don't seem too concerned about web standards.

dathinab 6y ago
Also let's be honest I'm not sure flutter web really matters. Flutter is a cross-paltform app framework. If you have a app on all platforms you (the company) care about the web app would often become just a seconds class citizen which you (the company) only have as some users are hesitant to install apps and some few users have some exotic platform or need access during holidays after their laptop was stolen etc. Anyway from a business POV a second/third class citizen you don't want to spend much money on. So flutter web would be good enough (once it's out of beta, at which point text selection likely will somewhat work). But if you ever have a web app as first class target you probably would never go for flutter anyway. My prediction: - Flutter will long term be come the new default native way to write apps on google phones. Dart will very slowly replace java. - Flutter will become a serious way to write the UI of apps on Linux, through maybe not as big as Qt/Gtk. But likely a common choice companies which target Linux as 2nd/3rd class citizen. - Companies mainly targeting Android will use flutter for their iOs, Windows, Linux, Web apps to save cost. - Google pushes some new Web API's around accessibility to provide a better flutter on web experience. Making it again harder for non chrome browsers, through in this case not intentionally.
- joduplessis 6y ago
  Yea to me I honestly think Google is throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. Personally I hope Flutter remains primarily on mobile.
- jitl 6y ago
  I really doubt that Flutter/Dart will displace Android/Jetpack Compose/Kotlin. Kotlin already very quickly replaced Java for new Android code at many places, and it offers big productivity advantages without any downsides. So, on Android there’s a strengthening incumbent. I think Flutter could evolve an interesting platform for “line of business” or “rapid application development” projects, similar to Lazarus/Delphi. In that respect, I agree that we could see growth for flutter for low-cost cross-platform projects, and on Linux. But, after the failures of React Native, none of the mobile developers I talk to have any interest in these non-native, layered-on-top frameworks that need a plugins ecosystem to call into native code or native APIs. Your productivity is basically held hostage by the runtime to an even greater degree than it already is on a mobile OS. I also don’t thing Google needs any new web APIs to make Flutter accessible. They can position some invisible divs with the right spots with the right WARIA attributes.
  - hajile 6y ago
    The major downside of Dart is no threading. Once they decide to fix that, there's not much standing in the way from completely replacing all the java bits. React Native has issues from how it bridges all the things from React to native. Flutter shims in the native APIs, but uses it's own components to avoid the bridge issue. In 2 years, most Android phones are no longer getting updates. Since the flutter app carries along most of its own dependencies, it can continue to provide up-to-date software long after the manufacturers have abandoned users. Flutter's canvas approach is literally Macromedia Flash all over again. I don't care if it's possible to shim in A11Y into flutter, it's bad for the web and bad for users. They need to rethink how to convert their renderer into DOM elements.
The_rationalist 6y ago
But the issue is that people are considering flutter for mobile to build decent user experiences, which it cannot achieve being flash player like
- joduplessis 6y ago
  Considering or are? 2 very different things. How do you mean "Flash player like"?
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    Flutter is riddled with correctness bugs, missing features (e.g no true svg support) , critical performance issues (https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/31138 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/31138) and an uncanny valley of UX behavior.
    - joduplessis 6y ago
      100%.

dathinab 6y ago

Also let's be honest I'm not sure flutter web really matters. Flutter is a cross-paltform app framework. If you have a app on all platforms you (the company) care about the web app would often become just a seconds class citizen which you (the company) only have as some users are hesitant to install apps and some few users have some exotic platform or need access during holidays after their laptop was stolen etc. Anyway from a business POV a second/third class citizen you don't want to spend much money on. So flutter web would be good enough (once it's out of beta, at which point text selection likely will somewhat work). But if you ever have a web app as first class target you probably would never go for flutter anyway. My prediction: - Flutter will long term be come the new default native way to write apps on google phones. Dart will very slowly replace java. - Flutter will become a serious way to write the UI of apps on Linux, through maybe not as big as Qt/Gtk. But likely a common choice companies which target Linux as 2nd/3rd class citizen. - Companies mainly targeting Android will use flutter for their iOs, Windows, Linux, Web apps to save cost. - Google pushes some new Web API's around accessibility to provide a better flutter on web experience. Making it again harder for non chrome browsers, through in this case not intentionally.

joduplessis 6y ago
Yea to me I honestly think Google is throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. Personally I hope Flutter remains primarily on mobile.
jitl 6y ago
I really doubt that Flutter/Dart will displace Android/Jetpack Compose/Kotlin. Kotlin already very quickly replaced Java for new Android code at many places, and it offers big productivity advantages without any downsides. So, on Android there’s a strengthening incumbent. I think Flutter could evolve an interesting platform for “line of business” or “rapid application development” projects, similar to Lazarus/Delphi. In that respect, I agree that we could see growth for flutter for low-cost cross-platform projects, and on Linux. But, after the failures of React Native, none of the mobile developers I talk to have any interest in these non-native, layered-on-top frameworks that need a plugins ecosystem to call into native code or native APIs. Your productivity is basically held hostage by the runtime to an even greater degree than it already is on a mobile OS. I also don’t thing Google needs any new web APIs to make Flutter accessible. They can position some invisible divs with the right spots with the right WARIA attributes.
- hajile 6y ago
  The major downside of Dart is no threading. Once they decide to fix that, there's not much standing in the way from completely replacing all the java bits. React Native has issues from how it bridges all the things from React to native. Flutter shims in the native APIs, but uses it's own components to avoid the bridge issue. In 2 years, most Android phones are no longer getting updates. Since the flutter app carries along most of its own dependencies, it can continue to provide up-to-date software long after the manufacturers have abandoned users. Flutter's canvas approach is literally Macromedia Flash all over again. I don't care if it's possible to shim in A11Y into flutter, it's bad for the web and bad for users. They need to rethink how to convert their renderer into DOM elements.

The_rationalist 6y ago

But the issue is that people are considering flutter for mobile to build decent user experiences, which it cannot achieve being flash player like

joduplessis 6y ago
Considering or are? 2 very different things. How do you mean "Flash player like"?
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  Flutter is riddled with correctness bugs, missing features (e.g no true svg support) , critical performance issues (https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/31138 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/31138) and an uncanny valley of UX behavior.
  - joduplessis 6y ago
    100%.