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Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

plei.one

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Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#71

Post by temporal828 »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #22
hbn wrote: post #17

The more "solutions" that are developed for desktop + mobile cross-platform applications, the more I see highlighted how different the paradigms are, and how the streams really shouldn't be crossed. They're both UIs viewed on a screen that you interact with by pointing and clicking, but the similarities end there. The entire output of this cross-platform effort has been awkward applications that run everywhere but fe…

That's nice if you have the funds and time for that. Fully native is ideal. But I don't agree cross-platform can't feel "right". Flutter's approach it can't. React Native's it can. Qt vs WxWidgets all over again. If I had to duplicate my codebase for each platform and learn each IDE/language just to continue my app, it would never exist. I solely created and maintain the iOS app, the Android app, and the web app for…

> Qt vs WxWidgets all over again.

Not sure how to interpret. Pro Qt or pro wx? I'm assuming the latter.

But I don't even agree. Qt is/can lay claim to native as much as anything else on desktop Linux/BSD. The quality of the Windows emulation has always been excellent as far as I'm concerned, at it's been pretty goodish on Mac.

But I've never seen a perfect cross platform library that targets Mac.

wxWindows may use system drawing at the low level, but those that have been in this for years know what's up: it's just an unholy messy quasi-MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class) looking thing - the model is inherently MS Windows from 1994. This is not magically going to work well as a Cocoa app just because it uses NSViews under the hood. And although the simple controls may use the OS, all the complex ones have tons of internal design. Like this is optimizing the wrong thing - as a normal person I probably care more about the look and feel of the tree view, whereas only the weirdos on here are going to get bent out of shape that some button text is a few pixels off - getting both right is nice, but only hitting the last one is pointless.

I've never seen a nontrivial wxWindows app that would fool anyone on MacOS. Qt can get much closer if you work at it a bit. So in practice I would say you can do better with Qt for the major desktop targets.

These are all compromises. And native hardly means anything these days. Yes Windows has what has been retconned as WinForms, but otherwise, the UI LnF of Mac OS is a constantly moving target and Windows has never been as consistent as people seem to believe. Linux/Desktop Unix - lol.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#72

Post by latchkey »

layer8 wrote: post #45
mike_hearn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although true, HTML doesn't let you customize context menus or (easily) open multiple windows either, and UI interactions frequently lag, but it's used for general desktop development all the time. These issues seem to be more that describing something as for desktop development raises the bar fairly significantly in terms of expected feature set. That's reasonable, but we should be careful in describing something as…

FWIW, I don’t consider web applications to be a suitable replacement for native desktop applications, not the least because they lack support for desktop UI conventions, which do exist for a reason; although it is true that many people nevertheless make do with web apps.

Flutter Desktop isn't the right environment for you.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#73

Post by synergy20 »

mhoad wrote: post #57
livinglist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I have been a happy flutter user for quite some time now, keep up them good work!

Same, contrary to some of the comments here I’ve had nothing but great experiences coming from a purely web background previously.

same here,keep up the great work.

by the way dart is my favorite cross platform language nowadays beyond flutter.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#74

Post by qdot76367 »

As someone shipping an app across all desktop and mobile platforms with flutter, binding it into a native rust library, I absolutely adore it. It does what I need and is fairly reliable about it everywhere, while keeping build systems and everything else mostly managed for me. As the post mentions, it’s not a panacea, but for someone who needs a good-enough solution, it’s been great.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#75

Post by loic-sharma »

malkia wrote: post #64
loic-sharma wrote: post #43

Hello, I'm from the Flutter desktop team. Thank you for the excellent feedback, this is truly invaluable. Here are some updates from our side: 1. Custom context menus - We just added this feature in Flutter 3.7, which was released two weeks ago. Please give this a try and let us know what you think! 2. Multi-window - This is a high priority for the Flutter team, we have several engineers working on this project curre…

Is impeler going to affect (in good way) the performance/latency on desktop too? (I think it's mostly for iOS now, right)?

Yup, but we're focused on mobile first as these are the most resource constrained platforms. We're also experimenting with 3D support in Flutter using Impeller. Check out these demos from Flutter Forward: https://youtu.be/zKQYGKAe5W8?t=6955

You can learn more about Impeller here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKrYWC_SDxQ

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#76

Post by malkia »

capableweb wrote: post #36
mhoad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hardly some toy SDK that is only suitable for MVPs. Google’s single biggest money maker Ads is built with it. It’s hardly a Google specific thing either there are a number of mega sized players also strongly betting on it for some fairly mission critical stuff if I understood correctly.

> Google’s single biggest money maker Ads is built with it You mean Google Adwords right, the admin panel? I can't see any evidence of that, nor is it listed at https://flutter.dev/showcase , where you get this from?

Google Ads is written in Flutter - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... - if you go download, skip the welcoming bits, and go to licensing you'll see lots of flutter libraries including flutter itself

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#77

Post by synergy20 »

temporal828 wrote: post #71
MrOwnPut wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice if you have the funds and time for that. Fully native is ideal. But I don't agree cross-platform can't feel "right". Flutter's approach it can't. React Native's it can. Qt vs WxWidgets all over again. If I had to duplicate my codebase for each platform and learn each IDE/language just to continue my app, it would never exist. I solely created and maintain the iOS app, the Android app, and the web app for…

> Qt vs WxWidgets all over again. Not sure how to interpret. Pro Qt or pro wx? I'm assuming the latter. But I don't even agree. Qt is /can lay claim to native as much as anything else on desktop Linux/BSD. The quality of the Windows emulation has always been excellent as far as I'm concerned, at it's been pretty goodish on Mac. But I've never seen a perfect cross platform library that targets Mac. wxWindows may use s…

or,just use flutter these days

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#78

Post by nicoburns »

olliej wrote: post #60
nicoburns wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since Apple does not allow JITted code apparently (not sure how React Native gets around this then) With React Native you have two options. Use Apple's own JavaScriptCore engine which has special JIT permissions, or use Meta's Hermes engine which runs as a bytecode interpreter. In either case you can always drop down to native code (Swift/Objective-C (iOS), Kotlin/Java (android), or C/C++ (any platform)) which can…

No, the ability to JIT is not per framework (I'm unsure how that would work?), it's per process. Using JSC doesn't give you a JIT - now the JSC interpreter is very fast, so it's possible claims that they "need JIT" are incorrect (back when I worked on JSC it was a common belief from people that the JITs were magic fairy dust, and so would come in to anything with a data-less assumption that a JIT was needed), it's al…

I don't think React Native is using WkWebView. But that the introduction of WkWebView which allows JIT was the source of my confusion. I was under the impression that JIT was enabled for any uses of JSC in iOS at that time. But it seems that is not the case.

So the situation with React Native is that you can either use JSC, Hermes (or I believe V8 in jitless mode). All of which are interpreters. On Android you can of course use JIT (with either JSC or V8).

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#79

Post by malkia »

xdfgh1112 wrote: post #3

Multiple windows is on the roadmap and high priority. For me the best use of desktop is testing mobile apps without having to use my phone or an emulator. It works really well.

Docking would be nice to have too! like what MSVC or Qt has (built-in in Qt is not that great, but Visual Studio is one to follow). It's a must for content creators with multiple monitors, especially if they want the layout to be preseved from session to session or create different layouts (e.g. how and where the windows are, what is docked in which other, etc) for other people as templates.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#80

Post by nicoburns »

satvikpendem wrote: post #52
izacus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but most common mobile apps ARE completely custom UIs which insist on their own branding and look. The UI designers usually really hate if they have to use standard components and are unable to express themselves. Flutter just recognises that.

Agreed, most apps I use already don't use native controls, like Slack, Discord, Spotify etc, and I don't want my apps to do so either since I have a custom design. I think people on HN think users care about platform UI when we see that most users really don't notice or care.

That depends on what kind of controls though. Many apps will their own buttons, but most are using the native text input control (and often the native scroll for screens / screen transitions.
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