Flutter is an open-source mobile UI framework developed by Google that enables rapid construction of high-quality native user interfaces across different platforms. Flutter supports all existing code and is increasingly embraced by developers worldwide. To date, nearly 500,000 applications using Flutter have been released globally, including apps from large companies like ByteDance and 30 teams within Google. According to analysts from Statista and SlashData, Flutter was the most popular cross-platform UI tool in 2021.
Compiled by Guo Lu
Produced by CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
On February 4, Flutter stable version 2.10 was重磅 released, launched during the Spring Festival, less than two months after the previous release. Yet even in such a short time, we have closed 1,843 issues and 1,525 PRs from 115 global contributors. This version update includes Flutter's major support update for Windows, performance improvements, new features across platforms, and tool enhancements.
Flutter 2.10 New Features Overview
1. Performance Improvements
Flutter 2.10 introduces preliminary support for drawing dirty area management provided by Flutter community member knopp. He enabled selective repainting for individual dirty areas on iOS/Metal. This significantly reduces the 90th and 99th percentile rasterization time in some benchmarks, and lowers GPU usage from over 90% to below 10% in those benchmarks.
Additionally, this version optimizes image formats. Developers can more efficiently adjust layer transparency. Rasterization time per frame in benchmarks has been reduced by at least one-third.
In profile and release modes, Dart code is compiled AOT. This unlocks many compiler optimizations and aggressive tree-shaking. However, because type flow analysis must cover the entire program, there is some impact on performance. Version 2.10 brings a faster type flow analysis implementation. In benchmarks, overall build time for Flutter applications has been reduced by approximately 10%.
2. iOS Updates
Besides performance improvements, Flutter 2.10 adds various enhancements on different platforms. For example, developer luckysmg brought smooth iOS keyboard animations, improved stability of the iOS camera plugin, and added a new feature for 64-bit iOS systems—compressed pointers—to reduce memory usage.
3. Android Updates
Flutter 2.10 also brings improvements for Android. When developers create new apps, Flutter now supports the latest version of Android, Android 12. Moreover, in this version, we enable MultiDex. If you are using an Android SDK version lower than 21 and exceed the 64K method limit, simply pass --multidex to flutter build appbundle or flutter build apk to support MultiDex.
4. Web Updates
The Flutter version also includes web improvements. In previous versions, dragging the mouse to the edge of a multi-line text box would not cause synchronous scrolling. In version 2.10, when the selection cursor is dragged outside the text box, the text box scrolls to browse and select the corresponding content. This feature applies to web and desktop applications.
5. Material 3
Flutter 2.10 marks the beginning of the transition to Material 3, which includes the ability to generate a full color scheme from a single color.
Developers can create a new ColorScheme type using any color. The ThemeData constructor also includes a new colorSchemeSeed parameter to directly generate a theme from a color. Additionally, this version includes the ThemeData.useMaterial3 parameter to switch widgets to the new Material 3 look. Flutter also adds 1,028 new Material icons.
In addition to the above features, Flutter 2.10 also improves integration testing, DevTools, and VSCode, and completely removes the Dev channel and support for iOS 9.3.6.
For this version update, the most eye-catching aspect is the stable support for Windows application development. Flutter product manager Tim Sneath issued a detailed explanation. Let's take a look.
Flutter Ready for Windows
Flutter aims to create an efficient cross-platform software framework and has made significant progress in the past few years. Flutter can develop applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS, and the web, and is compatible with all existing code. It has gained trust and support from developers worldwide.
Google stated, "Today marks a major expansion of this vision, with the first release of support for Windows as an application target, enabling Windows developers to benefit from the same productivity and power that mobile developers have enjoyed."
To achieve this goal, Google has been dedicated to Flutter development. Five years ago, Google launched Flutter Alpha, which greatly accelerated development speed on mobile operating systems. Flutter applications can be written in Dart and run on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, web, and embedded devices.
However, achieving Flutter desktop support was not easy. It had to be redesigned for Windows. Desktop applications need to be compatible with different hardware such as keyboards and mice, screens of various sizes, and have different requirements for input methods, visual styles, etc. They also need to support file system selectors, Windows Registry, and other data storage mechanisms.
Just as Flutter supports Android and iOS, Flutter for Windows combines the Dart framework with the C++ engine. Windows and Flutter communicate through an embedding layer that hosts the Flutter engine and is responsible for translating and dispatching Windows messages. Flutter and Windows work together to draw the UI to the screen and integrate with existing Windows patterns.
Developers can use all features of the Flutter framework on Windows and communicate with Win32, COM, and Windows Runtime APIs through platform plugins written in Dart or C++. The Flutter team has also updated many commonly used plugins to support Windows, including camera, file_picker, and shared_preferences. More importantly, the Flutter community has added Windows support to many other packages, covering everything from Windows taskbar integration to serial port access.
Hundreds of packages already support Flutter applications built for Windows.
For completely customized Windows UI, you can also use the packages fluent_ui and flutter_acrylic to create an application that beautifully expresses the Microsoft Fluent Design System. Using the msix tool, you can package your application in an installer that can be uploaded to the Microsoft Store on Windows.
In summary, Flutter 2.10 enables fast operation on Windows and can be transferred to other desktops, mobile devices, or the web. Here are early examples:
Following this release, Kevin Gallo, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Windows Developer Platform, said, "We are excited to see Flutter achieve support for creating Windows applications. As an open platform, Windows welcomes all developers. Flutter's ability to support Windows applications and be listed on the Microsoft Store demonstrates its trust in us. We look forward to Flutter's development on Windows!"
In addition, many Flutter partners are also increasing support for Windows, including:
- FlutterFlow, a low-code Flutter application design tool, announces support for Windows and will help Flutter developers build features specifically for desktop use.
- Realm, a local data storage tool, the latest version supports Windows applications built with Flutter, using Dart FFI for fast access to the underlying database, and adds to existing support for mobile platforms like iOS and Android.
- Nevercode has updated the Codemagic CI/CD tool to support Windows, allowing users to test and build Windows applications in the cloud and automatically deploy to the Microsoft Store.
- Syncfusion has updated widgets to support Windows, including data visualization components that support creating PDF files and Excel spreadsheets.
- Rive announces an upcoming Windows version of its graphics tool suite, allowing developers to create interactive vector animations that respond to code in real time using state machines. They will also release a Windows application with impressive performance and memory usage, available soon on the Microsoft Store.
Currently, feedback on Flutter 2.10 remains very positive. What are your expectations for the Flutter 2.10 release? Feel free to leave a comment below.
References
- https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/04/flutter_windows_production_release/
- https://medium.com/flutter/announcing-flutter-for-windows-6979d0d01fed
- https://www.mongodb.com/developer/article/introducing-realm-flutter-sdk/
- https://medium.com/flutter/whats-new-in-flutter-2-10-5aafb0314b12
Copyright notice: This article is an original work by CSDN blogger "Technical Vision" and follows the CC 4.0 BY-SA copyright agreement. Please include the original source link and this statement when reprinting.
Original link: https://blog.csdn.net/csdndevelopers/article/details/122808516