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Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

developers.googleblog.com

341–350 of 467 posts

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#341
Because some people asked when to use Flutter instead of something like React-Native.

Complex UI.

If you got a system with complex UI, like Photoshop, Maya or Logic, you want it to look the same on all platforms. Sure, it won't adhere 100% to the platforms idiosyncracies, but re-designing it forever platform isn't an option. It's too expensive and people already poured time into learning the UI and just want it to work the same when they changed platforms.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#343
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gluon, PTC and Aicas also license JavaFX. Qt licensing costs are quite standard to market prices of similar products. Also if one doesn't want to pay for Qt, it is free to do themselves the same they want to do with upstream developers.

Your last sentence is a bit hard to comprehend but not paying for Qt and shipping a commercial embedded product is pretty difficult due to the anti-tivoization clauses of GPL3. I agree with parent poster that flutter is very interesting for Embedded GUI development.

Qt has LGPL3 license Not GPL3.

It's really easy to ship commercial Qt app with LGPL3 (except few modules that are GPL3) You just provide sources or linkable object files.

Qt intentionally avoids explaining how to do this because they are selling commercial licenses. If you are in software business and can't figure this out, maybe you should consult someone.

(disclosure: I own commercial Qt license and stock in the company)

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#344

Has Flutter solved its footprint-bloat problem? The internet is littered with reports of 10-100MB+ .ipa and .apk binaries coming out of simple Flutter apps for iOS + Android. Google states they can't imagine the footprint ever dropping as low as 1MB. [1] On Web, 1MB of base runtime is a complete showstopper. Embedded applications may suffer similarly. Does today's announcement mean Google has figured out how to fix t…

I don’t understand the obsession with small binaries and compiled packages. I care about usability and user experience. If it takes 5mb to have a smooth experience then I’m all for it. It’s funny how we now have fiber having 1GB/s internet speeds and we rant about having 1MB size package being too big. Also, everyone’s moving to 4k now with even bigger transfer/data requirements. tldr; 1mb should be a non issue as lo…

I have gigabit internet and the web is still dog slow. It got a good bit faster when I started blocking third party garbage, but it still doesn't feel any faster than it was in the early 2000's, despite that my internet is literally 17,000 times faster and my computer is also tons faster.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#345
post #245

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

Internal politic wars at Google, with management having popcorns to see who wins at the end. If you are confortable with Qt, JavaFX, Xamarin, there is hardly anything to see with Flutter, plus they are based on programming languages that you actually want to have on your CV, instead of one that was dropped from Chrome and rescued at last minute by AdWords team. Plus, even Fuchsia is not so focused on Flutter anylonge…

> Plus, even Fuchsia is not so focused on Flutter anylonger. Android userspace is being ported to Fuchsia, and now they have a UI Framework agnostic layer, Scenic, with examples in C++ and Rust.

I highly doubt that. See here https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/topaz/+/bd4464d6b8d586d74b6...

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#346

This is the example flutter app for the web - https://www.nytimes.com/games/prototype/kenken#/ This is flash. You can't do anything in it that fills like the web - no copy paste, right clicking causes things to happen. I don't expect games like this to have links and proper bookmarkable urls, but I doubt it'll work as expected if it did. This is the epitome of the problem with flutter - it re-implements the UI, creat…

You're bemoaning that the lack of use of DOM to render the UI???? Seriously? That ship has sailed when Canvas was introduced in the mid-2000s and it was introduced for the EXACT reason to provide the same kind of capabilities that people had with Flash.

People wanted and want to build rich web-based APPLICATIONS - not just websites with columns of text. That's why Flash became huge, and that's why HTML now has Canvas, Video, WebGL, WebAssembly, WebRTC (all of which were available in Flash - sometimes years before they were available in HTML).

The specific example you showed, nyTimes puzzle game, you'd never build that on-top of DOM (you could, but why would you?). You'd use JS to draw your UI with the Canvas 2D APIs. So I don't know what you're talking about.

>There's a reason why flash died out, and it's not only apple. It was dropped for making interactive website long before apple killed it - it doesn't work well with the web

NO!!! That's not why Flash died out. Flash died out because you had a standards-based alternative. Steve Jobs probably accelerated the transition a little bit, but it was inevitable.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#347

This is the example flutter app for the web - https://www.nytimes.com/games/prototype/kenken#/ This is flash. You can't do anything in it that fills like the web - no copy paste, right clicking causes things to happen. I don't expect games like this to have links and proper bookmarkable urls, but I doubt it'll work as expected if it did. This is the epitome of the problem with flutter - it re-implements the UI, creat…

You're bemoaning that the lack of use of DOM to render the UI???? Seriously? That ship has sailed when Canvas was introduced in the mid-2000s and it was introduced for the EXACT reason to provide the same kind of capabilities that people had with Flash. People wanted and want to build rich web-based APPLICATIONS - not just websites with columns of text. That's why Flash became huge, and that's why HTML now has Canvas…

Flashed died out way before canvas. No one but design shops made their websites with it. It remained strong in games and ads and disappeared everywhere else. That is why apple could even survive not supporting it.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#348
post #245

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

Internal politic wars at Google, with management having popcorns to see who wins at the end. If you are confortable with Qt, JavaFX, Xamarin, there is hardly anything to see with Flutter, plus they are based on programming languages that you actually want to have on your CV, instead of one that was dropped from Chrome and rescued at last minute by AdWords team. Plus, even Fuchsia is not so focused on Flutter anylonge…

Holy hell, this makes me want to never work for google.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're bemoaning that the lack of use of DOM to render the UI???? Seriously? That ship has sailed when Canvas was introduced in the mid-2000s and it was introduced for the EXACT reason to provide the same kind of capabilities that people had with Flash. People wanted and want to build rich web-based APPLICATIONS - not just websites with columns of text. That's why Flash became huge, and that's why HTML now has Canvas…

Flashed died out way before canvas. No one but design shops made their websites with it. It remained strong in games and ads and disappeared everywhere else. That is why apple could even survive not supporting it.

>Flashed died out way before canvas.

No. Canvas was introduced in 2004 but not really mainstreamed until a few years later. I would put the golden age of Flash as 2000-2008, with a slow decline after.

>It remained strong in games and ads and disappeared everywhere else.

You're just saying things, but you inadvertently hit on the point that I'm making, that is the decline of Flash coincided with HTML/JS being given capabilities to actually replace Flash. Had that never happened, you'd still have Flash because there would be things that people would want to do over the web, and no other way to do it.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#350

This is the example flutter app for the web - https://www.nytimes.com/games/prototype/kenken#/ This is flash. You can't do anything in it that fills like the web - no copy paste, right clicking causes things to happen. I don't expect games like this to have links and proper bookmarkable urls, but I doubt it'll work as expected if it did. This is the epitome of the problem with flutter - it re-implements the UI, creat…

Also slow.

Flash was fast. Much faster than JavaScript+DOM at the time. In fact, it was only within the last few years that browser JavaScript and rendering engines became more performant.
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