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Flutter for Linux

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131–140 of 225 posts

Re: Flutter for Linux

#131
post #105
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's the best multi-platform solution for mobile They announced beta version for Windows in the last few weeks, so what to expect? I've been using it on linux desktop for 4 months so far, there were many problems, but it's absolutely the best framework so far. It's miles ahead of Qt (which I've been programming in since 2010). Dart and flutter are just years ahead of Java, C#, Qt and React Native in terms of positiv…

Hoe is it ahead of Qt (on desktop)?

I'm wondering this, too. While I enjoy Flutter, it doesn't hold a candle to the extensive Qt library and QML.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#132
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack in the browser is visibly superior to the slack app. When I close the tab it's really dead. Great feature. The slack "app" is just their web site and a web browser zipped together in such a way that it doesn't actually quit when you tell it to quit. Why anyone wants that I cannot begin to imagine.

I'm not sure what you mean. On OS X quitting the app certainly seems to actually quit it

"""By default, your app is set to keep running in the notifications area even when the window is closed. Choosing not to leave the app running will remove the Slack icon and badges from your notifications area."""

Re: Flutter for Linux

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true: Google preloads their design conceptions, namely Material, into Flutter at the ground level, and Material is a terrible set of UI patterns, such as the ones the parent comment was complaining about.

You don't have to use the material design stuff, you can just make your own components, all custom, just as you would on the web. Just replace MaterialApp with WidgetsApp at the root of the application tree.

You don't have to, but it is the default, which means it sets the standard of design there. Unsurprisingly, most things you see made with Flutter tend to either be or be similar to Material.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#134
From the screenshots and gifs over there I can tell that someone is again forcing people to look at 1) animations 2) grey fonts instead of black and they are even bragging about it being beautiful. These also tend to enormously waste screen space.

Are especially those two things configurable by user? I mean - there has to be no animations at all (why does anyone insist on animating theme change? that is just ridiculous), and black text, not grey. If not, that is complete deal breaker. Please tell me I'm wrong and one can configure everything there.

Single word: accessibility. More words: normal accessibility without needing to re-set whole system to be "accessible" just because one app developer can't behave.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the dart/flutter team would focus on improving dart for web (e.g. by updating/fixing the JS bindings) instead of chasing flutter for web which seems like a long shot and rather hacky (referring to using the canvas for rendering content)

> using the canvas for rendering content This sounds like Flash all over again. Let me guess - no native text select, copy & paste supported? Scrolling is "wrong" in a subtle way?

Yea, Flutter Web isn’t viable and likely never will be. The approach will require re-implementing browser primitives (like copy paste) which means you’re always going to need to ship a ton of JS to clients which makes it antithetical to the PWA approach.

EDIT: thanks for the downvote. But you don’t have to take my word for it, this sentiment is (privately) shared by Googlers themselves working on Chrome and PWAs.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#136
post #110
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gnome is already adopting Rust That's not accurate. There are some Gnome contributors opting for Rust. Gnome is not adopting Rust.

GUADEC Rust meetings and the GStreamer improvements show another picture.

No, the picture is exactly what I just described—that those contributors are using Rust.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using the canvas for rendering content This sounds like Flash all over again. Let me guess - no native text select, copy & paste supported? Scrolling is "wrong" in a subtle way?

We haven't reached perfection yet (that's why we're still in beta), but our goal is to be _very_ different to Flash in these kinds of areas. Here's an example of text fields: https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/demo/text-field Right-click and you have access to the browser context menu; choose Inspect and you can see a or control.

Frankly that feels exactly like a Flash page. Natively selecting text content isn't supported on either Firefox or Chrome on Android (apart from within inputs). Scrolling is broken ("yanky").

Flutter for Web further feels like a nightmare for accessibility. I tried enabling the native Google screenreader on my device. It only says "No text found at that location" when I try to read any of the Flutter demo pages in either Chrome or Firefox. In addition to being extremely hostile to people with disabilities, it will soon actually be illegal to build new products with accessibility-hostile tech like Flutter for Web for large parts of the European public and private sector:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Accessibility_Act

> we're still in beta

From these viewpoints that feels more like an early alpha product. In 2020 no accessibility support is a non-starter.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using the canvas for rendering content This sounds like Flash all over again. Let me guess - no native text select, copy & paste supported? Scrolling is "wrong" in a subtle way?

We haven't reached perfection yet (that's why we're still in beta), but our goal is to be _very_ different to Flash in these kinds of areas. Here's an example of text fields: https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/demo/text-field Right-click and you have access to the browser context menu; choose Inspect and you can see a or control.

That's really cool but I think all text, such as "Please enter only alphabetical characters", should be selectable. For example someone may want to copy & paste it into a bug report.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dart is the reason I don't like flutter. Why do you feel C# is worse then Dart?

Dart is...fine. The real value comes in its code generation features, which enable packages to add whatever language features they want even if the language maintainers don't (yet), such as algebraic data types, functional programming features, etc. You can argue this as being good or bad for future maintenance but it's nice to have the ability to add to the language.

> The real value comes in its code generation features, which enable packages to add whatever language features they want

Got any eamples of ADTs, pattern matching, immutable collections, data classes, named parameters, etc.?

Coming from Scala and TypeScript the Dart language is pretty unappealing wrt syntax and functionality, kind of archaic actually. Flutter looks amazing and have been hoping that Dart would evolve more quickly than it has.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#140
post #15

I'm actually a great fan of flutter and imo it is the best cross-platform solution out there. Probably except for web: though it produces very good result performance-wise, the end result is never really "web" and doesn't act like traditional web. As for desktop applications(whether it be windows, linux or mac), it seems like it's too mobile-oriented. I see great potential for simple solutions like self-service opera…

I've been using Flutter in the last few months and agree. It's the best multi-platform solution for mobile , although it still doesn't match native behavior and performance, it only gets close. On the web it's DOA for most use cases - it's just a canvas, so scrolling, text selection, shadow rendering, etc. is custom, doesn't feel native and must be downloaded and compiled. It can have a future on desktop. One "cultur…

Flutter for web feels like going back to the .net "webforms" days, where you could supposedly build a web app the same way as a desktop one and the whole client-server thing was abstracted away. Except it sucked, I still have nightmares about viewstate. Seeing Flutter apps that render everything to canvas feels similar.

Developing once for iOS and Android seems obvious and doable, but extending that to the web is a different game.

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