Google’s Flutter is out, and it comes bearing many gifts for the development community. At the recent I/O Developer Conference, Google unveiled Flutter 3.0 with several new capabilities, but its reinforced multiplatform support for macOS and Linux has taken center stage.
The director of Product and UX for Flutter, Tim Sneath, said, “We’re announcing Flutter 3, which is the culmination of our journey to delivering multi-platform UI development across phone and desktop and web.”
With extended support systems for different platforms and operating systems, Flutter 3 gained immense applause from the development community. As per the Flutter 3 release notes, we found that the revamped Flutter can now support iOS, Android, web applications, and operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop applications.
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Let’s get into the details of the Flutter 3.0 release and identify how it can impact the development environment.
Major Additions and Improvements in Flutter 3.0
1. Single Codebase for Six Platforms
With Flutter 3.0, developers can provide impressive user experiences over six platforms with a single codebase. This is going to make the developers super productive as they won’t have to spend much time and effort on the coding part.
The time they save here can be utilized to improve the customer experience further. The developers and designers can address the market issues specifically while generalizing the coding part.
From support for iOS and Android applications based on the web and Windows to adding support for macOS and Linux, Flutter is venturing into the new. And by adding support for these platforms is not just about adding the pixels, but it is about;
- Adding new input and interaction models
- Build and compilation support system
- Internationalization
- Accessibility support
- Platform-specific integration
Plus, there are several other aspects that are added when support for a new platform is added.
2. Support for Firebase
Firebase and Flutter have a long-standing relationship. Flutter developers had already been using Firebase for building and maintaining applications. With Flutter 3.0, the comprehensiveness of Firebase and its ability to make a difference in application maintenance has gone one step further.
63% of Flutter were using Firebase for this purpose. They are using Firebase for;
- Crash reporting
- Log maintenance
- User analytics
- Authentication
- Storage
With the integration of Firebase in Flutter, the developers have got better documentation and tooling. Developers can use the addition of new widgets like FlutterFire UI for reusing authorization and profile screens.
In addition to making this entire process much simpler and easier, Fluter 3 latest features also include an improved Crashlytics plugin. This plugin is meant to help developers track and assess fatal errors in real-time.
3. Flutter Casual Games Toolkit
Writing and building applications for Flutter has always been the pioneering focus of the development team at Google. What started as a humble beginning to create and write performant applications has today grown, both vertically and horizontally.
The Flutter Casual Games Toolkit is a step towards letting developers build casual app-like games for different platforms with Flutter. In this, you will get;
- Game Template app: A pre-built codebase for the prebuilt features of a game, including main menu, music, sound, in-app purchases, leader boards, achievement section, crashlytics support system, etc.
- Video Tutorial: This will teach how to build your own game in Flutter.
- Tic Tac Toe: It will also provide access to the source code for the tic tac toe game built with Flutter 3.0 with the help of the Game Template. This game will work on Android and iOS devices.
The developers working with Flutter can also use the DartPad powered by the Flame engine to test their game ideas and get help from the community.
4. Flutter App Initialization
The initialization of the Flutter app on the web has been changed, albeit transformed, in the new update. The Google I/O 2022 edition, which brought forward the new face of Flutter 3.0, has added an amazing feature for web app initialization.
Using the _flutter.loader JavaScript API, the developers can view the loading indicator in CSS. The same API can also be used to prevent the app built from loading based on some specific conditions, and also set the app to work or launch at the press of a button.
The initialization process has been revamped through and through. From loading the entry point script to running the application, you can customize the behavior at each stage of the process.
In this, the Flutter create function can be used to upgrade an older project. This can be done by creating a new index.html file with the latest required template. Followed by this, you can delete the old files from the web directory and then run the flutter create function.
5. The Happy Paths Project
For Flutter developers who want to move forward from the basic level, Flutter 3.0 release notes also mention the Happy Paths Project. This is a dedicated learning and resource segment meant for beginner Flutter developers to take the next step.
This segment of the update specifically caters to the analysis paralysis, where they receive recommendations to make informed decisions about the Flutter development project.
Happy Paths project has several packages to help you achieve your development goals and provide the required guidance. Gradually, the newbie developers will ramp up their capabilities to build more complex applications.
6. Support for Material Design 3
Flutter 3.0 has added support for Material Design to improve visual and behavioral motion-rich widgets to implement rigorous material design guidelines. The developers and designers can get better access to app structure and navigation, buttons, selections, inputs, panels, alerts, dialogs, information displays, and layout.
These are all the widgets that have either been added or have improved, among other Flutter 3 latest features. The Material Design 3 elements have innate capabilities for adding dynamic color, an improved color system, and enhanced typography.
Now all these elements can be integrated into applications developed with Flutter 3.0. This gives you the ability to realize the original ideas into dynamic, responsive, and robust solutions.
7. Mobile Updates Added in Flutter 3
With Google introducing Flutter 3, the development community will experience extensive support for mobile updates. These include;
- Foldable Phone Support
With the help of Microsoft corporation, Flutter 3 has included support for foldable mobile devices, which was not present earlier. With this addition, developers can easily enable developers to build vibrant and eye-catching robust interfaces. For these devices, Flutter 3.0 also allows developers to add new widgets and features to foldable devices.
- Variable Refresh Rate
Flutter 3.0 comes with a higher refresh rate for iOS devices. The iOS devices with a promotional display can get variable refresh rates with Flutter. On these devices, Flutter applications can draw a refresh rate of 120 Hz, increased from 60 Hz. The increased refresh rate is useful in providing better graphics and more fluid motions during scrolling and switching between pages.
- Simplified iOS Release
Flutter 3 has changed its entire game for iOS devices, case in point the new streamlined approach for iOS delivery. You will work with the new ipa command and have additional options in the latest Flutter release. The ipa command options you will get include;
- export-method development
- export-method ad-hoc
- export-method enterprise
Using these ipa commands on XCode Archive and app bundle while distributing the application to TestFlight or the app store.
- Gradle Version Support
In Flutter 3.0, you will work with the latest version of Android Gradle and Gradle plugins. You should manually upgrade the Gradle version of the existing projects to 7.4 (Gradle) and 7.1.2 (Android Gradle Plugin).
8. Updates for the Web
As there are specific updates available for mobile, the same are available for the web-based applications built with Flutter.
- Image Decoder API
With the new release, the Image Decoder API is detected automatically. The detection happens automatically in the supported browsers, where the API controls the loading and processing of the Flutter engine, framework, and its content.
Due to the Image Decoder API, Flutter can be transformed into headless mode. The main benefit of this API is the faster processing of the images along with zero interruption caused with the images in the previous versions.
- Lifecycle API
The updated Lifecycle API is important among other Flutter 3 latest features. This API lets developers bootstrap the web applications without having to serve an HTML page.
Plus, using the Lighthouse (Google’s tool for analyzing web pages) for web application’s performance, the developer’s can assess a variety of situations, including splash screen loading indicators.
- Limited Support for Windows
With the new Flutter 3.0 release, Windows 7 and 8 will have limited support.
9. Updates in the Tooling
Flutter has brought four updates major updates in the Tooling section;
- Lint Package
In Flutter 3.0, the v2.0 sets of lint are enabled by default while working with Flutter Create. The developers are suggested to upgrade the current applications, bundles, and extensions to v2.0 and work with Command Flutter pub upgrade - major-versions flutter_lints.
Plus, the updated lint version is automatically updated with pubspec.yaml file to the latest version. Developed can run the - -apply function to correct most lint warnings automatically.
- Impeller
In the earlier versions of Flutter, jank has been causing some development issues. However, among the Flutter 3 latest features, an impeller precompiled a smaller set of shaders during the engine build time.
This means that these shaders won’t compile when the application is running. Earlier, the compilation process during the time when the application was running is credited as the primary source of jank.
But with the latest Flutter version, which by the way, has not been fully implemented with reference to the impeller, we can get better performance, efficiency, and quality.
- Android Inline Ads
A mobile or web application has several important functions and features like scrolling, transitions, etc. These are added to improve the user experience.
Google Flutter 3 has bombarded the development community with amazing and long-awaited updates. Besides the major ones we have mentioned above, you will also find upgrades to theme extensions (add anything from the Material library’s ThemeData) and personalized advertisements.
Moreover, Flutter 3 is native to Apple Silicon, which is meant to enhance development techniques. At the time of its initial launch, Flutter was compatible with M1-powered Apple devices.
Today it takes full advantage of Dart’s support for Apple Silicon, ensuring support for universal binaries on macOS applications.
Conclusion
With these upgrades and additions, we can only say, “what’s more to be added here?” The Flutter 3 latest features are added to improve the development of applications and solutions built with cross-platform technology. Now developers can add more ideas and possible applications to their list and improve the performance plus outcome of the existing solutions.
For companies that already have running applications on Flutter, they can hire a flutter app development company to migrate to the new version. The fact that Flutter is a Google product makes it even better and gives us a surety about its future development.