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Flutter 2

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Re: Flutter 2

#102
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were pretty clear about the intention here: make the web available as a platform for running mobile and desktop-style apps. If you're trying to create a classical website, it's not the right tool. Use html and css. If you're trying to make a rich app, I'd bet on Flutter. I'd be interested in seeing it become easier to make a combination of the two -- flutter apps embedded in classical websites.

> flutter apps embedded in classical websites. Sounds like Java applets.

Which mostly died from JVM startup time (Think 30 + seconds). There was other issues as well (security and UI issues mostly) but if you knew what you were doing, Java applets were not bad for the time IF the JVM as already loaded.

Re: Flutter 2

#103

The idea sounds very appealing, especially to an indie developer: being able to ship your app on multiple platforms from a single codebase is kind of the holy grail. Unfortunately, the result is.... I tested this Flutter example[1], on a 16" MBP with and i7, and it is janky as it can get, it feels like I'm using a 15 year old computer. From the code it looks like the whole thing is... rendered on canvas? I'll pass. […

If it's running on canvas, normally you would see "unpkg.com/canvaskit-wasm" - and even then it may not be the latest (supposedly more optimized) version. For example, my simple Super Tic Tac Toe app - uses it - https://malkia.github.io/tictactoe/#/ - but the gallery was compiled to use HTML, instead of canvas - which would be slower (IMHO). I think there is even mixed mode - where it can choose one or another ("fat" binary on the web ;)).

Please look at the Source (in chrome) to compare.

Re: Flutter 2

#104
post #39
post #7

Flutter for Web feels like such a wild step backwards in terms of functionality that I'm not sure the benefits it brings are worth it. I just tried a few samples, and basic interactions like selecting text, saving images, and opening links in new tabs don't work. This is the result of rendering everything to a element. I'm much more interested in a React Native style approach, which seems to provide a consistent set…

The example spinner ( h https://flutter.dev/#dartpad-landing-page ) also looks pretty choppy on my Macbook Pro 16. I haven't tried on lower-specced devices, but it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Doesn’t seem to work at all for me on an iPad

Re: Flutter 2

#105
I think Dart's new way of declaring variables as null safe by default is very interesting. If you want a variable to be able to hold a null, you have to explicitly say so. It seems a less heavy-handed version of how Golang handles nil, and much better than the standard way of declaring variables in most any other language.

Maybe this is some common language thing I haven't seen before, but it seems an "obvious in retrospect" sort of idea.

Re: Flutter 2

#106
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tested on my phone (1yr old pretty good Android one) and the whole thing is very laggy runs with like 10fps. What about a11y? The whole thing feels like Adobe Flex in 2010. It solves a great deal of problems that the web had but introduced a plethora of others.

[Flutter Eng. Dir. here] Still relatively early days for Flutter Web, so I would not be shocked if it's not buttery everywhere. However, we would certainly love to learn more. fluter.dev/support has links as to how to file an issue if you're interested. https://flutterplasma.dev/ is one demo to try. We expect to be updating flutter.dev/web and flutter.dev/showcase to update more over time.

Thanks for the reply! What about a11y? Can you navigate a Flutter page via keyboard? What about screen reader support?

Re: Flutter 2

#107
post #7

Flutter for Web feels like such a wild step backwards in terms of functionality that I'm not sure the benefits it brings are worth it. I just tried a few samples, and basic interactions like selecting text, saving images, and opening links in new tabs don't work. This is the result of rendering everything to a element. I'm much more interested in a React Native style approach, which seems to provide a consistent set…

Welp. We can kiss accessibility goodbye then, can't we?

[Flutter Eng. Dir. here]

Accessibility is actually a really big deal here on Flutter (Ian Hickson and I both worked on Accessibility in browsers for years). AX is something I feel we've done pretty well with on iOS and Android. Web is still pretty early days, but many AX features should work already. We have more AX work to do on web yet. We've not yet taken any Flutter Web apps through Google's accessibility testing processes similar to how we've done on the mobile side, but I expect we will soon.

Re: Flutter 2

#108
post #7

Flutter for Web feels like such a wild step backwards in terms of functionality that I'm not sure the benefits it brings are worth it. I just tried a few samples, and basic interactions like selecting text, saving images, and opening links in new tabs don't work. This is the result of rendering everything to a element. I'm much more interested in a React Native style approach, which seems to provide a consistent set…

Things changed a lot, I observed the same symptoms as late as late 2020, I can't reproduce these issues now In general Flutter for Web is _amazing_ if you want to deploy an app. after seeing this thread, pretty clear to me its almost a perfect nerdsnipe - makes perfect sense if you're already building a Flutter codebase, sounds bonkers if you build web apps.

I have a large Flutter codebase and flutter web is still alpha quality in my opinion, there's way too much jank to make it work properly on a web platform.

Re: Flutter 2

#109
post #41

> Google Pay switched to Flutter a few months ago for their flagship mobile app, and they already achieved major gains in productivity and quality. By unifying the codebase, the team removed feature disparity between platforms and eliminated over half a million lines of code. from pay.google.com > Starting April 5, you won't be able to use pay.google.com to send and receive money from other people. To send and receiv…

The easiest way to get rid of 500,000 lines of code is to delete your website

Re: Flutter 2

#110
post #41

> Google Pay switched to Flutter a few months ago for their flagship mobile app, and they already achieved major gains in productivity and quality. By unifying the codebase, the team removed feature disparity between platforms and eliminated over half a million lines of code. from pay.google.com > Starting April 5, you won't be able to use pay.google.com to send and receive money from other people. To send and receiv…

The website and the app are two different things.
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