Google Launches Flutter 1.0, Dig Out Its New Features & Usability

The much awaited Google’s Flutter 1.0 finally released at its standalone event Flutter Live at the Science Museum in London, UK. The stable version of the Flutter 1.0 is a full blend of productive features that help developers to build beautiful native apps for the top platforms such as Android and iOS.

Flutter 1.0 – How Does It Perform Like?

The all-new Flutter 1.0 is fast, beautiful, productive and open to all. Yes, it’s an open source SDK which offers developers to create a beautiful app for cross vary platform with a native experience. The new app is powered by Skia 2D Graphics Engine which makes the app absolute fast while it allows the developer to imply their full creative vision to create a beautiful app.

Purpose Behind Flutter Release

“Cross-platform mobile development today is full of compromise. Developers are forced to choose between either building the same app multiple times for multiple operating systems, or to accept a lowest common denominator solution that trades native speed and accuracy for portability,” Tim Sneath, Group Product Manager for Flutter.

According to Tim Sneath, Group Product Manager for Flutter, for want of proper tool to develop a cross-platform app, the developer has to choose between two things: either they accept the compromised development solutions or build the same app for multiple times for multiple platforms.

What Sets Flutter Apart, then?

The purpose behind the Flutter release is to provide the developer with robust solutions to develop a unique app for the top platforms such as Android and iOS. In fact, this is the full blend of hardware-accelerated graphics and UI which is uniquely powered by native ARM code. Flutter provides you options to either embed it to your existing app or create an all-new one. This is what sets Flutter apart from others.

Characteristics of Flutter 1.0

Flutter has gone through intense experiment process and it does understand the demand, needs and requirement of both developers and users. Prioritizing these things, the tech giant Google has made Flutter out of the box SDK.

Flutter Develops Beautiful Apps:

Flutter provides full control without limitations that enable designers to make outstanding designs. In fact, limitations of the underlying framework leave designers with no option but to deliver conservative design.

• Flutter provides powerful compositing capabilities
• It allows creating animated graphics, videos and texts
• Flutter consists of a full set of widgets
• The widgets offer pixel-perfect experiences

In fact, then you get the mixer of designing features which enable the realization of Google’s famous design system -Material Design.

Flutter has Fast Engine:

The Flutter 1.0 is powered by the Skia 2D graphics engine which is the same as it introduced with its previous releases. It will enable the framework to provide glitch-free, jank-free graphics along with native speed. Dart 1 has been replaced by its modified version which makes the app faster than ever.

Flutter Make Productive:

The stable version of Flutter 1.0 has come up with some new while most of the features are the same as in the previous releases. However, all its previous software and functionality has been modified. The new Flutter comes enabled with stateful hot reload to provide developers and designers to make changes in code and design and see the changes instantly, that too without restarting the app. In fact, some developers in user survey claim that “Stateful hot reload is three times more productive.”

Flutter Open Source:

Of course, Flutter is an open source framework and there are thousands of developers around the world who has contributed to making the Flutter great achievement. According to Google, you just not get Flutter for free, but there will thousands of plug-ins which can also be downloaded to make Flutter customized based on your needs.

Features of Flutter 1.0

As far as features of 1.0 are concerned, most of them are the same as in its previous release. However, there is some unique development as well. Let’s check them out.

• Flutter announces 2Dimensions to create vector animations
• Dart platform, 2.1 is an update from the previous Dart 2
• With Dart 2.1, it provides a smaller code size, faster type checks, etc.
• Dart 2.1 also offers greater speed

All You Need to Know about Flutter Growth

The journey started on almost a year back with Flutter first preview release. The beta version got huge appreciation form cross-sections of enterprises and developers across the arena. Much before its stable version -Flutter 1.0 release, some of the top companies like Abbey Road Studios, Alibaba, Capital One, Groupon, Hamilton, JD.com, Philips Hue, Reflectly, etc. are using the Flutter in the apps.

Flutter Preview 2:

It was the final preview released by the tech giant Google. They released the preview considering it as the final. In fact, the stable release is the same (except a few modifications) as the preview.

Visual Library Widgets

It helps developers present their vision through the art of development. The increased Visual library of widgets to make all things of development more interesting for the iOS-style interface. Google has already released Material Design widgets that gives Android native app development feel to developers. Visual Library is specifically for iOS and provides user native experience.

What is Next to Flutter 1.0?

You must be thinking on what next will be from Flutter side for the framework. Fortunately, Google has something new to offer in the future. In its Flutter Live event, it introduced the two previews of new features: Add to App and Platform Views. Developers are allowed to use them in a preview mode.

Add to App:

Add to App has a purpose of providing a clean slate, to begin with, Developers carry out development with scratch, but this feature will enable them to work with a clean slate. For the users who want their existing app transformed through Flutter and want to convert the applications to Flutter, the ‘Add to App’ will enable them to do so.
Flutter has already container supporting Android and iOS, but the new feature will help developers to incrementally adapt Flutter with the help of Flutter templates, tooling, and guidance.

Updates: Add to App will continuously provide updates for this features to make it, even more, easier to suit perfectly in a complex scenario.

Platform Views:

One hand ‘Add to App’ will help developers to introduce Flutter into the existing Android and iOS application, the ‘Platform Views’ is just the other way to embed Android or iPhone platform. The Flutter has introduced platform view widgets named as AndroidView and UiKitView to help developers embed content based on the desired platforms.

Note: The final version of ‘Add to App’ and ‘Platform Views’ may release in February 2019

What More It Offers

Apart from all these, Google’s Flutter has something more to offer to make Flutter even more adorable. As Google is already working for Android and iOS, it is aiming to extend Flutter beyond mobile use. It is going to work on the broader platform. In fact, the primary purpose of the Flutter is to get its place wherever the pixel exists.

Flutter beyond Mobile:

Keeping the purpose to serve broader platform, Flutter Desktop Embedding is going through its early development process. That means the Flutter is eyeing to work on Windows and iMac OS. Recently, Flutter also released Flutter on Raspberry Pi for small devices at large.

Hummingbird:

It’s a web-based implementation of the Flutter which helps developers not just to compile native ARM code but to JavaScript also. No change required to make it run on the standards-based web. If you want to go through the complete details of Hummingbird, you can refer the article by Flutter.

In short, I hope that you have got a comprehensive idea of Flutter 1.0. You can download the Flutter 1.0 by following the Link