Flutter for Windows. What are the new Updates in Flutter 2.10
This article is another discussion in Flutter, and it’s about the new stable version of Flutter 2.10. What are the new features they introduced, and what are the enhanced features here? Here I gave you a clear answer to these two questions. All you may already know, Flutter is an open-source framework sponsored by Google for building beautiful, compiled, multiplatform apps from a single source code base. Flutter allows you to create beautiful experiences. Flutter is open with thousands of contributors adding to the core framework and extending it with a vast ecosystem of packages. Therefore Flutter is getting popular day by day. Also, this new release is a good sign for a better future for Flutter. World wide developers engaged with Flutter want to reach their iOS and Android users quickly and easily from a single source code base. Two years ago, at their event Google IO, they shared the vision to expand Flutter from mobile apps to desktop apps.
And Flutter marks a significant milestone for our desktop vision with the stable release of our Windows support. This enables Windows developers to benefit from the same productivity and power that mobile developers have already enjoyed with Flutter.
And there’s a lot that extended to the desktop from our experience on mobile developments.
- GPU-accelerated graphics
- Rendering system
- Animation
- Theming
- Text input
- Globalization and Localization
- Widgets
Even these features have been extended by mobile apps, it's not enough to succeed in desktop apps. They need the following also:
- Large Displays
- Mouse and Keyboard Apps
- Navigation
- Input modes
- Accessibility
- IMEs
- Visual styling
- OS-specific features
If you’re building for windows, Flutter considers and offers every feature for you.
How Flutter works on Windows
Just like on other platforms, on Windows, your app runs it using a native platform embedder(C++). The embedder is the shell that hosts the Flutter content and interfaces with the rest of the operating system, including user input, rendering, and message handling. In addition, Flutter’s architecture allows you to call any of the thousands of Windows APIs offered through Win32, COM, and the Windows Runtime or WinRT.
The engine is at the top of the embedder. A small runtime provides our app with the Windows implementation of the scale library, which does the GPU accelerated drawing. The engine also includes the Dart runtime and the text-rendering libraries.
The framework is positioned on top of the engine and provides the core animation, layout, and rendering services of Flutter. As well as the widgets in which you write your code. It gives the design system that gives your app its look and feels.
You can choose from several widget libraries. The Material design system can be fully customized to give your app a consistent UI across multiple platforms.
How hard is it to take the advantages when targeting Windows with Flutter?
You can do it quickly and look better in windows by using the same widget libraries. Also, you can build it as a native executable file and install it. That executable is just your Dart code compiled into x64 assembly language instructions. And so when we double-click it, it started fast. It calls “zero latency startup,” one of the benefits you get with Flutter. And you get a much smaller, faster experience than you might otherwise get in mobile development. The Windows developer community for Flutter has already provided a fantastic tool called the “MSIX tool.” Now, MSIX is a file format that Windows supports for setup integrating into the Start menu, uninstalling. So let’s build an MSIX with this tool.
You can start from nothing to a generic desktop app and then a generic desktop app to a windows app suitable for distribution on the windows store. All of that consumed just a few minutes. There are already more than 200+ Windows-specific plugins along with more than 10,000+ Windows-compatible packages that you can drop into your Windows apps. Not only plugins and packages, but tools support as well. Flutter DevTools provides a host of advanced debugging tools for your Windows apps. And our tooling partners are adding windows support as well. Such as FlutterFlow, codemagic, etc.
Therefore, when you build your Flutter app on Windows, you expect to have complete control over every pixel, just like you do on any other platform Flutter supports. You want your choice of animations, control over the theming, smooth scrolling, access to a wide array of font choices, and the list goes on.
Rive animations allow creators to add rich, animated, interactive content to their products. Rive animations have done a fantastic job of looking excellent and utilizing what makes the desktop unique. They’ve also done a great job integrating their app into the services of Windows itself.
In addition, the Windows embedder for Flutter automatically integrates with services like global text input, so your windows apps are global-ready. Also, Flutter is committed to supporting you in making your apps more usable, inclusive, and accessible. So how do you get started with Flutter on Windows? You just need to install Flutter 2.10, which will be released on 3rd of February 2022. If you’re an existing Flutter developer, you’ll be happy to know that Flutter 2.10 includes many new features as well as performance and quality improvements.
