Google launches Flutter 2.0 to develop developers on all platforms

Google unveiled version 2.0 of Flutter, its open source UI development kit that helps application manufacturers create cross-platform software from the same code base. While the update introduces a number of new features, today’s launch event may have been designed primarily to highlight the continued transition from Flutter beyond mobile devices to support applications wherever they reside – the web, the desktop and even even emerging shape factors like folding.

The Internet giant unveiled Flutter for the first time at its I / O developer conference in 2017. Version 1.0 came on the scene in December 2018 with support for Android and iOS apps, but in the more than two years since then, Google has extended support (a little) to include web applications, MacOS, Linux, Windows and even embedded devices. However, this support was only offered in early-stage iterations that were not available to most developers or were not designed for production-level applications – and that is what is changing today.

The Flutter web development kit has been in beta since 2019, but today it achieves the same citizen status with its Android and iOS brothers. For desktop developers, Google has also transitioned from Flutter for Windows, MacOS and Linux to the main “stable” version, approaching prime time.

“This is a major milestone for us – not only because the code itself is now ready for serious use with production quality, but also because, in the past, it was only available to a small minority of Flutter users who were running the software pre-launch development kit, ”Flutter product manager Tim Sneath told VentureBeat in a question and answer email.

Using Google’s own Dart programming language, Flutter was designed to help developers create native-looking applications for each platform they run on, while sharing as much code as possible to avoid duplication of effort.

There are a number of platform-specific considerations that developers need to make when designing applications, including how people interact with their devices (for example, tapping and sliding on the phone, keyboards and mice on the desktop), the different screen sizes that users consume content, and even the language they use to write. That’s why it takes time to progress the various Flutter development kits in their release cycles.

“We did a lot of work to reach this stage, including adding support for internationalization, for example, IME editors for languages ​​like Chinese, new widgets like TreeView and DataTable designed for desktop support and better support for Apple Silicon development machines” said Sneath.

Specifically on the Linux side, Canonical – the company that markets Ubuntu-related projects – today revealed that Flutter is now its standard framework for developing desktop and mobile applications for the Ubuntu operating system. This is based on last July’s announcement by Google and Canonical, which kicked off Flutter’s expansion into the Linux realm and made Canonical’s engineers contribute code to the Flutter project.

As part of this most recent expansion, Canonical unveiled an initial demonstration of a new Ubuntu installation application developed on Flutter.

Other notable Flutter updates announced today include a beta version of the Google Mobile Ads SDK, which was in initial pilot mode until now, which offers several ad formats for AdMob and AdManager. And Google also released Flutter plug-in updates covering several Firebase services, including Authentication, Crashlytics, cloud messaging and cloud storage.

Meanwhile, Dart arrives at version 2.12 today, with support for null security (or “null security”), which is designed to avoid these null exceptions.

Flicker by

Last April, Google revealed that 500,000 developers use Flutter each month. Almost a year later, the company has not provided any updates on this number other than saying that “adoption continues to grow”, but the main number it is announcing today is that there are 150,000 apps powered by Flutter on the Google Play Store. It does not have access to the same tracking features for other app stores (ie Apple) to provide data from elsewhere.

“Interestingly, we know that there are apps where they add a Flutter app to one mobile platform and then roll it out to the other,” said Sneath.

In terms of who is using Flutter to build applications, well, Google itself is firmly behind it. In September, Google Pay started using Flutter, adding Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Shopping, Google Nest Hub, Stadia and other Google products that were already using the development kit. Looking externally gives you a better idea of ​​which developers are putting their eggs in the Flutter basket – they include the real estate ad site Realtor.com, the Chinese titan of Tencent technology, the Latin American fintech company Nubank, the payment service Square and the manufacturer of wireless audio systems Sonos.

It is clear why the premise behind Flutter is an attractive proposition – fast and consistent cross-platform coding. But for larger and more complex enterprise applications, a native software development approach is likely to remain the preferred approach for most companies because Flutter is a relatively young structure, with fewer third-party software libraries and packages restricting developers.

“Ecosystems don’t grow overnight and Flutter is still a new platform by some standards, but we believe in the 15,000 packages and companies represented above [e.g., Nubank and Realtor.com] they are evidence of rapid growth in filling the remaining gaps, as they exist, ”said Sneath. “We are very encouraged by this continued growth.”

There is clear evidence that companies are interested in what Flutter has to offer, with Nubank strongly supported by VC going so far as to publish its full ethos on why it is using Flutter for mobile cross-platform development. According to Sneath, Flutter solves two main challenges for large companies.

“First of all, they find it exasperating that, in order to reach all of their customers, they have to build the same application two, three, even four or more times,” he said. “There is no good parallel for this duplication – they don’t create multiple billing systems, multiple payroll platforms, etc. It is a waste and leads to all kinds of second-rate problems: since you do send multiple applications to various platforms, all development teams have to go at the speed of the slowest, etc. “

The second problem that Flutter solves, according to Sneath, is that companies can invest millions in creating and maintaining a set of corporate brands, but they can be restricted to what they can do with their digital properties due to its built-in limitations.

“Often the tail wags the dog here – its customer-facing sites are driven by what the structure allows them to do, rather than the other way around,” said Sneath. “They love that Flutter gives them control.”

open code

The open source movement has gained momentum over the past decade, with most major technology companies embracing it to some extent – Facebook has opened up the source code to countless internal projects, while Google itself is no stranger to the source code. open. Microsoft, for its part, has worked hard to show that it is all-in in open source, recently declaring that it is now the accepted model for collaboration between companies.

And this is a point worth taking – while Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, et al. often face each other as competitors, the open source world is where they play well. Google may be the biggest single contributor to the Flutter structure, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. “Of all the individuals who contributed to this launch, the majority do not work at Google,” said Sneath. “It is clear that the Flutter is more than just the main structure; there are about 15,000 packages available, the vast majority of which come from non-Google contributors, such as Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Huawei, Alibaba, eBay and Square. “

With the latest version of Flutter, Microsoft has added some notable contributions, particularly around its growing focus on the “foldable” form factor, which can involve dual-screen devices. Microsoft is now releasing code to support these new designs, allowing applications to take advantage of their unique functionality.

And that highlights why open source makes sense for this project – Google needs full industry and ecosystem membership for Flutter to flourish, and if developers can get full access to a code base, they’re more likely to stay away. Ouch.

“Software developers being able to see the code across the stack is a big plus for a UI structure,” said Sneath. “Being able to debug through layers instead of hitting a black box makes developers more productive. Being able to take a control or widget and fork it if it doesn’t meet your needs ensures that the structure itself is never a limiting factor. From a purely selfish perspective, being open source means that we receive contributions from a talented community. Being able to get our customers to send a bug and a fix at the same time, or to fix something privately, is another big advantage. “

Flutter 2.0 is now available to developers.