Introduction to Flutter

#flutter #dart #mobile

What is

Flutter is an open source framework created by Google, to build beautiful apps, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase.

They bring an easy and productive way to create mobile and cross-platform applications.

Programming Language

For Flutter development is used the programming language Dart, which is a client-optimized language for developing fast apps on any platform. Its goal is to offer the most productive programming language for multi-platform development.

Versions history

Flutter first version was presented in 2015 on Dart Developer Summit, and it was known as “Sky”.

On September 10, 2019 they released the version 1.9, Flutter’s web support has been merged (“unforked”) into the main repo. Web support hasn’t reached beta, and was not ready yet to be used in production.

On October 1, 2020 they released the version 1.22, they bring supporting iOS 14 and Android 11, new i18n and l10n support, Google Maps and WebView plugins ready for production, a new App Size tool and others features.

On March 3, 2021 in the Flutter Engage Edition the version 2.0 was released, Flutter web and Null Safety move to stable, Flutter desktop moves to beta.

At May 18, 2021 in Google I/O Edition, was released the 2.2 version, the focuses was on polish and optimization, including iOS performance improvements, Android deferred components, updated service worker for Flutter web.

On September 8, 2021 the version 2.5 was released, it brings performance improvements, development tools updates, new Material and App template.

The version 2.8 come out on December 8, 2021, it comes with performance improvements, new Firebase features, desktop status, tooling updates.

On February 3, 2022, Flutter Team released the version 2.10.0 which brings stable release of Windows support.

Platforms

Today with Flutter we can build for:

Mobile -we can develop once and deploy to both iOS and Android.
Web - we can create web apps with the same codebase from your mobile app.
Desktop -we can build desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux without rewriting.
Embedded -we can create solutions for smart devices, cars and others.