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Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

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Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#281

Post by tobiaswk »

I've been following and using Flutter since release 0.2. I think Flutter is an amazing project. It makes writing concise and beautiful apps very easy. I've come to love Dart and the whole Flutter framework. I really think it is the best framework to write Android applications. It also works great for iOS were you can either choose to use Material or Cupertino components. It is a huge improvement over the old Android SDK; which is quite outdated in my opinion. It's too hard to create a beautiful app with the current Android SDK. To many hurdless. Flutter feels like what developing an Android app should be like today. Another thing about Flutter is that it's also ready to work with Google's (upcoming; maybe) Fuchsia OS. One loose end is still the plugins for native features on either iOS and Android. There are many community driven plugins which aren't really maintained. Fortunately there is also a large set of plugins maintained by the Flutter team itself.

I've tried Xamarin, React Native and Cordova (god forbids) and native development on iOS and Android. My preference is Flutter.

I've done one big(ish) project with Flutter and it's called "My Leaf" and it is a third party alternative to the NissanConnect EV app. It's used for controlling the Nissan Leaf and Nissan e-NV200 (both EV's). It's open source and available on Android and iOS;

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.kjeldsen.ca...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-leaf-for-nissan-leaf/id14...

I've seen some of the comments in this post talk about developing plugins for Flutter. I actually think it is easy and does not require much boilerplate contrary to what people say. My guess is that they really haven't tried writing a plugin but only peeked at the documentation.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#282

Post by leeman2016 »

shrewduser wrote: post #237
Zerocchi wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who use Java a lot and don't favor Javascript I'm grateful there is Dart.

Typescript isn't JavaScript

In fact, one of the best thing about typescript is that you can bring in almost everything you know about javascript into the game.

It took me few days to pick it up when moving from JS to typescript. I don't get it when people say it is complex or adds complexity.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#283

Post by npunt »

fit2rule wrote: post #271
npunt wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game engines are a place where it makes sense to roll your own UI framework many times, so on that point I agree with you. The purpose of a game is generally immersion and escape, so makes sense to remove users from their device's UI in many instances. Game UIs tend to have their own conventions so frequent players don't have much of a learning curve. But in general players accept some learning curve because games ar…

There are so many aspects of modern UI that are not functional, and serve only to distinguish one platform from another in the wider market-place - so I feel that your statement that the OS-provided UI is a 'tool' is misguided. There is nothing tool-like about making me wait for a swipe scroll to complete - this is a game mechanic designed to entertain. And in that sense, its quite possible to make a non-native UI th…

Let me restate what you're saying to see if I understand it:

A product that looks the same across platforms is better than a product that adapts itself to the platform it is on, in part because platforms have a lot of UX that isn't good.

My argument for why its better to adapt a product to the platform is threefold:

1. Users have made the choice to use a particular platform and either like or at least tolerate that platform's approach to UX.

When in Rome.

2. Users are using many apps not just the one you made.

This is about scope. You can't just optimize your app in isolation, you have to take into consideration the entire scope of usage on a platform. It's certainly possible to create the perfect UX for a given set of tasks a user has to perform in an app, but drop that into a platform and its likely you've just added a huge learning curve and ongoing cognitive load.

3. Users mostly do not use your app on different platforms.

Users probably own either iOS or Android. If they own one, they aren't even aware of how the other one works. And on desktop, who cares because screen size and pointing device differences necessitate different UX anyway.

----

I think there are some instances where having the exact same UX on very different platforms is more ideal UX for the user, but only after it's acknowledged that a) its not just a proxy argument for being easier on the developer/designer, b) its not just the result of developer/company tunnel vision which leads to the assumption that users care about the app as much as the developer/company does, c) users actively want a different experience (e.g. immersive game), and/or d) users are moving more frequently between platforms than different apps on platforms (e.g. a business use case).

From a business perspective it's certainly fine to choose to use a cross-platform kit as there's many reasons to do so, I'm just arguing that it's not ideal for the user the majority of the time.

As far as whether platforms have not-good UX, I mostly disagree. I'd need to see examples of what you're talking about. If by swipe scroll you mean momentum scrolling I disagree. That has great utility on small screens to traverse large lists and it grounds the device in physical metaphors. It's a fantastic UX innovation.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#284

Post by jakub_g »

exacube wrote: post #164
dmix wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all excellent points. I'm curious how Flutter stands to address these risks/issues in the early days. I'd imagine it will take much more than 1.0 to get close to parity with the OS. Even if we assume it will always be 90% of the full OS experience (which is fine for the vast majority of use cases).

It helps that the Flutter and Android teams can talk to each other (they're both part of Google). So atleast for Android, you might be able to expect Android platform features appearing on Flutter in sync'd release cycles. And in cases where you're using platform-specific feature that Flutter doesn't support yet, then your experience will be no different -- the burden remains on you to write platform-specific code. I…

Two Google teams talking to each other and syncing their agendas and deliveries (or two teams in any big company) is quite a major assumption.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#285

Post by kangoo1707 »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #257
s17n wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unsurprising consistent behavior is a value. Looking at the last 30 years of software development, it's pretty clear that users don't care very much.

They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Software today has internalized the idioms so much that its developers don't even realize it. "My app is a snowflake and needs a custom design language and UI." You're vim or Photoshop or AutoCAD or Excel: you're targeting dedicated users who are prepared to invest in learning a specialized UI. Fair enough. But if you're not one of th…

Website (+responsive mobile sites) have been using custom UIs for years and no one bats an eye

A framework for mobile uses custom UIs and everyone loses their minds?

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#286

Post by npunt »

kangoo1707 wrote: post #285
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Software today has internalized the idioms so much that its developers don't even realize it. "My app is a snowflake and needs a custom design language and UI." You're vim or Photoshop or AutoCAD or Excel: you're targeting dedicated users who are prepared to invest in learning a specialized UI. Fair enough. But if you're not one of th…

Website (+responsive mobile sites) have been using custom UIs for years and no one bats an eye A framework for mobile uses custom UIs and everyone loses their minds?

1. People regularly complain about inconsistent web UI.

2. Even web apps often have similar idioms and patterns to their UI that they've settled on. It's their own patterns that are different from desktop OS, it's basically another category.

3. Most web apps are used on desktop, not mobile. On mobile, it's mostly native apps that are used. So they're not substitutes.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#287

Post by [deleted] »

fit2rule wrote: post #183
jmull wrote: post #83

Cross-platform frameworks that don’t use native controls have suffered from problems... - They inevitably don’t look or work like native apps in ways both big and small, frustrating and annoying users. (... the spell-checker doesn’t work right or text selection is janky or unavailable where it should be, certain short-cuts work differently or have different gestures or keys, etc.) - they don’t get updates to native c…

There's one place where none of this matters: Games engines. Games have the same, consistent (hopefully) easy to use interface across every platform they support. They either accomplish this, or they simply don't survive on the market. It has to be said that most modern UI frameworks ARE game engines, anyway. Or maybe its a tautology: game engines eventually become platforms, which become "OS's on other OS's". Which…

[deleted]

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#288

Post by npunt »

coldtea wrote: post #278
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Software today has internalized the idioms so much that its developers don't even realize it. "My app is a snowflake and needs a custom design language and UI." You're vim or Photoshop or AutoCAD or Excel: you're targeting dedicated users who are prepared to invest in learning a specialized UI. Fair enough. But if you're not one of th…

> They do care. Try writing a DOS or Blackberry-style app today and see what happens. Nothing much. Some of the most downloaded and bought apps (desktop and mobile) have horrible custom UIs. As long as the app has the crucial functionality, few care. And I'm talking for average users. As for pros? Well, vim and Emacs are DOS style apps (well, in that they use curses and totally un-native GUI paradigms), and they're s…

Sure but lets not forget the single most successful consumer product in history (iPhone) owes much of its success to it's clean, consistent UX across a suite of built-in apps. More people probably use those than downloaded apps.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#289

Post by xxgreg »

pjmlp wrote: post #60

Unless they force Flutter upon Android devs, I will let it pass, not eager to learn Dart.

Given the number of times I've seen pjmlp complain about Flutter choosing Dart. I think he/she could have learned the language in less time than writing all of those comments.
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