6 ms·

Why doesn't flutter.dev use flutter as their front end?

47 points by owenpalmer 4y ago

detaro 4y ago
Because it isn't an app? (and web still is kinda a side thing for flutter - you can do it, but it's not the thing)
- postalrat 4y ago
  "Flutter transforms the app development process. Build, test, and deploy beautiful mobile, web, desktop, and embedded apps from a single codebase." "The second thing" is pretty close to "the thing".
  - feet 4y ago
    "Test" is the second item in that list
  - detaro 4y ago
    I care more about what's happening in practice than marketing speech semantics.
  - __ryan__ 4y ago
    “web … apps”
  - return_to_monke 4y ago
    Well yes, although I would reorder in terms of support/completeness: mobile/desktop/web/embedded
kevmoo1 4y ago
Great question! While we'd love to be the best solution for every problem, it turns out the HTML-based web has been highly optimized for decades for text-heavy, linear, reading experiences. So we're staying focused on the places where Flutter does the best job: interactive, non-linear, more-create-than-consume. So our sites use HTML & CSS: flutter.dev, dart.dev, pub.dev And our devtools are built in Flutter Web: https://docs.flutter.dev/development/tools/devtools/overview https://docs.flutter.dev/development/tools/devtools/overview Along with web experiences from rows.com, reflection.app, rive.app, supernova.io, and many more. FYI: I'm the product manager working on Flutter and Dart web tech at Google (edit: fixed domain, mis-added one app)
- owenpalmer 4y ago
  > HTML-based web has been highly optimized for decades for text-heavy, linear, reading experiences If browsers offered a lower level graphics API, would that give a significant performance improvement over canvas? What is the performance bottleneck for flutter web? Is it the overhead of drawing to the canvas, or dom tree optimization? I'm very interested in this topic.
  - yjbanov 4y ago
    (disclaimer: I work on Flutter Web) It's mostly about algorithmic trade-offs. When you know your content layout is static and is highly biased towards vertical scrolling, you take different kinds of performance trade-offs, such as pre-computing and caching layout and painting output. Like when you know your array is sorted, you can use binary search to find an element instead of scanning. When pages do invalidate HTML layout you will actually see very bad jank. This is one of the classic performance pitfalls on the web, even using "classic" frameworks, like React or Angular. Flutter's current widgets and rendering primitives are biased towards dynamic content, where over-computation like this would hurt performance when you layout or paint isn't stable. Instead, we optimize for volatile content, using tricks like lazy rendering and repaint boundaries. We can still add primitives needed to render static content efficiently. We just feel like we're not yet sufficiently done with the non-static case.
    - owenpalmer 4y ago
      Interesting, that makes perfect sense from the perspective of working with existing browsers. I think it's awesome that the flutter team is making canvas work. But what I'm curious about is why an average consumer laptop can render a game with 3D projection, PBR, physics, and multiplayer networking, made by a newbie in a game engine. But that same laptop struggles to render a webpage. Even an extremely complex and content-heavy webapp is nothing compared to a game. There has to be a bottleneck other than dom optimization, right? Like I mentioned before, canvas painting must have huge overhead...
      - 4y ago
UncleEntity 4y ago
Shouldn’t clicking the link answer the question? —edit— And since there’s flutter devs here, how is dart as a general purpose programming language? I’ve looked into it a couple times but never really too hard because it didn’t seem like the Linux support was all that good, probably changed now though.
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  I would hope Linux support is decent since Ubuntu is supposed to be adopting Flutter as their default choice for UI https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-desktop-with-flutter-3 https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-d...
  - imiric 4y ago
    Where do you see that Ubuntu is adopting Flutter as default? That link is an announcement for the latest version of Flutter, which supports building Linux apps, and that Canonical helped make happen, but I don't see a mention of it becoming the default toolkit.
    - teg4n_ 4y ago
      Here, this link explicitly says it https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far >making Flutter the default choice for future Canonical mobile and desktop apps. The other link was more up-to-date about the state of Flutter on Ubuntu though.
      - imiric 4y ago
        Ugh, thanks. Canonical can't seem to escape bad strategic and technical decisions. They're still pushing Snaps, and now settling on a default tech stack that might disappear whenever Google gets bored of it.
        mhoad 4y ago
matchbok 4y ago
Flutter's days are numbered - iOS continues to grow. More and more companies won't bother with Android given how poorly Google has managed that OS.
- kyawzazaw 4y ago
  I doubt it. You can't just look at the smartphone market share in the US or a few wealthier countries.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ljarett 4y ago
  While iOS continues to grow, so does iOS development using Flutter :) I believe that iOS users tend to favor apps with beautiful designs, and Flutter's blank canvas gives developers the ability create expressive and unique UIs. If you're looking for an example check out Wonderous.app
- mad_tortoise 4y ago
  As a long time professional mobile engineer, that has worked on all three of Android, iOS and Flutter. This is plain wrong. Flutter is a brilliant framework, despite what hardcore native devs of either platform might tell you. It has it's flaws, but the speed of its improvement and its usability as a cross-platform framework is probably the best on the market. That combined with being able to just code native Android or iOS if you really have an issue you can't overcome make it quite powerful. You're also plain wrong about Android. It is by far the largest platform in every country outside the first world, and is not going anywhere. You just have to look at Asia, Africa and South America to understand that around half the world use it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
origin_path 4y ago
An example of a UI toolkit that does do this is https://jpro.one https://jpro.one which renders JavaFX apps to HTML. They use it for their whole website and even their documentation. It works fairly well except if you go offline and lose the connection to the server.

47 points by owenpalmer 4y ago

detaro 4y ago

Because it isn't an app? (and web still is kinda a side thing for flutter - you can do it, but it's not the thing)

postalrat 4y ago
"Flutter transforms the app development process. Build, test, and deploy beautiful mobile, web, desktop, and embedded apps from a single codebase." "The second thing" is pretty close to "the thing".
- feet 4y ago
  "Test" is the second item in that list
- detaro 4y ago
  I care more about what's happening in practice than marketing speech semantics.
- __ryan__ 4y ago
  “web … apps”
- return_to_monke 4y ago
  Well yes, although I would reorder in terms of support/completeness: mobile/desktop/web/embedded

kevmoo1 4y ago

Great question! While we'd love to be the best solution for every problem, it turns out the HTML-based web has been highly optimized for decades for text-heavy, linear, reading experiences. So we're staying focused on the places where Flutter does the best job: interactive, non-linear, more-create-than-consume. So our sites use HTML & CSS: flutter.dev, dart.dev, pub.dev And our devtools are built in Flutter Web: https://docs.flutter.dev/development/tools/devtools/overview https://docs.flutter.dev/development/tools/devtools/overview Along with web experiences from rows.com, reflection.app, rive.app, supernova.io, and many more. FYI: I'm the product manager working on Flutter and Dart web tech at Google (edit: fixed domain, mis-added one app)

owenpalmer 4y ago
> HTML-based web has been highly optimized for decades for text-heavy, linear, reading experiences If browsers offered a lower level graphics API, would that give a significant performance improvement over canvas? What is the performance bottleneck for flutter web? Is it the overhead of drawing to the canvas, or dom tree optimization? I'm very interested in this topic.
- yjbanov 4y ago
  (disclaimer: I work on Flutter Web) It's mostly about algorithmic trade-offs. When you know your content layout is static and is highly biased towards vertical scrolling, you take different kinds of performance trade-offs, such as pre-computing and caching layout and painting output. Like when you know your array is sorted, you can use binary search to find an element instead of scanning. When pages do invalidate HTML layout you will actually see very bad jank. This is one of the classic performance pitfalls on the web, even using "classic" frameworks, like React or Angular. Flutter's current widgets and rendering primitives are biased towards dynamic content, where over-computation like this would hurt performance when you layout or paint isn't stable. Instead, we optimize for volatile content, using tricks like lazy rendering and repaint boundaries. We can still add primitives needed to render static content efficiently. We just feel like we're not yet sufficiently done with the non-static case.
  - owenpalmer 4y ago
    Interesting, that makes perfect sense from the perspective of working with existing browsers. I think it's awesome that the flutter team is making canvas work. But what I'm curious about is why an average consumer laptop can render a game with 3D projection, PBR, physics, and multiplayer networking, made by a newbie in a game engine. But that same laptop struggles to render a webpage. Even an extremely complex and content-heavy webapp is nothing compared to a game. There has to be a bottleneck other than dom optimization, right? Like I mentioned before, canvas painting must have huge overhead...
    - 4y ago

UncleEntity 4y ago

Shouldn’t clicking the link answer the question? —edit— And since there’s flutter devs here, how is dart as a general purpose programming language? I’ve looked into it a couple times but never really too hard because it didn’t seem like the Linux support was all that good, probably changed now though.

teg4n_ 4y ago
I would hope Linux support is decent since Ubuntu is supposed to be adopting Flutter as their default choice for UI https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-desktop-with-flutter-3 https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-d...
- imiric 4y ago
  Where do you see that Ubuntu is adopting Flutter as default? That link is an announcement for the latest version of Flutter, which supports building Linux apps, and that Canonical helped make happen, but I don't see a mention of it becoming the default toolkit.
  - teg4n_ 4y ago
    Here, this link explicitly says it https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far >making Flutter the default choice for future Canonical mobile and desktop apps. The other link was more up-to-date about the state of Flutter on Ubuntu though.
    - imiric 4y ago
      Ugh, thanks. Canonical can't seem to escape bad strategic and technical decisions. They're still pushing Snaps, and now settling on a default tech stack that might disappear whenever Google gets bored of it.
      - mhoad 4y ago

matchbok 4y ago

Flutter's days are numbered - iOS continues to grow. More and more companies won't bother with Android given how poorly Google has managed that OS.

kyawzazaw 4y ago
I doubt it. You can't just look at the smartphone market share in the US or a few wealthier countries.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ljarett 4y ago
While iOS continues to grow, so does iOS development using Flutter :) I believe that iOS users tend to favor apps with beautiful designs, and Flutter's blank canvas gives developers the ability create expressive and unique UIs. If you're looking for an example check out Wonderous.app
mad_tortoise 4y ago
As a long time professional mobile engineer, that has worked on all three of Android, iOS and Flutter. This is plain wrong. Flutter is a brilliant framework, despite what hardcore native devs of either platform might tell you. It has it's flaws, but the speed of its improvement and its usability as a cross-platform framework is probably the best on the market. That combined with being able to just code native Android or iOS if you really have an issue you can't overcome make it quite powerful. You're also plain wrong about Android. It is by far the largest platform in every country outside the first world, and is not going anywhere. You just have to look at Asia, Africa and South America to understand that around half the world use it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

origin_path 4y ago

An example of a UI toolkit that does do this is https://jpro.one https://jpro.one which renders JavaFX apps to HTML. They use it for their whole website and even their documentation. It works fairly well except if you go offline and lose the connection to the server.