Flutter 3.27: Wrapping Up the Year with Innovation and Progress

As we bid farewell to an extraordinary year, Flutter 3.27 arrives to cap 2024 with an impressive array of updates. This release showcases the dedication and passion of the Flutter community, with over 1,400 commits from 187 contributors, including 49 first-time contributors. It’s a great way to wrap up a year filled with progress and collaboration.
Let’s take a closer look at the highlights of Flutter 3.27 and how they set the stage for an exciting future.

Framework: Building Bridges to the Future

Cupertino Widgets Shine Brighter

Flutter’s final release of 2024 brings Cupertino widgets closer to perfection. CupertinoCheckbox, CupertinoRadio, and CupertinoSwitch have been updated with refined sizes, colors, stroke widths, and improved customizability. Transparent backgrounds have been added to CupertinoNavigationBar and CupertinoSliverNavigationBar for seamless transitions during scrolling.

Key Highlights:

1. The **CupertinoSlidingSegmentedControl **now offers support for proportional layouts and the ability to disable individual segments.
2. The **CupertinoButton **now includes iOS 15+ styles with the addition of the new **CupertinoButtonSize **constructor, a tinted constructor for translucent backgrounds, and an **onLongPress **handler for enhanced functionality.
3. CupertinoPicker and CupertinoDatePicker now allow users to scroll directly to selected items, enhancing interaction smoothness.
4. **CupertinoAlertDialog **adds support for the tap-slide gesture, enhancing its usability.

CarouselView: Dynamic Layouts to End the Year

The newly introduced CarouselView.weighted feature unlocks creative possibilities with the flexWeights parameter. This allows developers to craft layouts like multi-browse, hero, and centered-hero, offering dynamic and flexible design options.

Polishing Material Design

Flutter continues to refine Material Design with improvements that enhance user experience and developer flexibility.

Enhanced Features:

SegmentedButton now supports vertical alignment via the direction property.
Expanded icon-related properties for ButtonStyleButton classes (e.g., ElevatedButton, FilledButton, OutlinedButton) and the styleFrom method enable greater customization.

Bug Fixes:

1. Resolved AppBar scroll-under behavior, ensuring consistency on Android.
2. DropdownMenu and MenuAnchor now feature improved focus and scrolling behavior, even within nested elements.

Streamlined Route Transitions

Flutter’s ModalRoutes now support synchronized animations between new and existing routes, ensuring smoother and more polished app transitions—an ideal way to improve user experience as we enter a new year.

Rows and Columns

This version also has a new place to work with rows and lines, that's the difference! This double-precision parameter offsets row and column children by a fixed number of pixels, reducing the amount of code previously required.

Text Selection

SelectionArea improvements include:

1. Support for Shift + Click gestures for better text selection.
2. Enhanced resizing behavior for smoother operation.
3. The ability to clear text selection via the clearSelection method on SelectableRegionState.

Additionally, issues with RenderParagraph have been addressed, ensuring reliable text selection even after resizing the window or tapping outside the text.

Looking Back, Moving Forward
2024 has been a year of progress, innovation, and collaboration, and Flutter 3.27 stands as a testament to the power of a global community united by a shared vision. Here’s to a year of building, inspiring, and innovating with Flutter—and to reach even greater heights in the future!