Flutter now dominates the Hybrid App Development scenario. Flutter Apps have always been one of the best alternatives to native Android and iOS applications. Flutter Developers have been playing around with cross-platform frameworks time and again to capacitate it within their development processes. Xamarin and React Native are equally good at developing across platforms.
Versions updates work upon the bugs of previous releases that restrained the build to work. At this point, Flutter is a UI software development kit that is used for developing applications that work across Android and iOS platforms.
As a part of the Google I/O keynote on May 11, 2022, Flutter 3 was released in Google I/O Edition. Flutter now supports Universal binaries by default on Windows, macOS, Linux platforms, and Apple Silicon chips, Intel Pentium and improves Firebase integration to enhance productivity, and performance. Flutter 3 mops up multi-platform UI development on phones (Android/iOS), desktops (Windows) and the web. It supports macOS out of the box, but the support for other platforms is provided via plugins that set WidgetBinding.platformMenuDelegate in their initialization. Flutter 3.0, and 3.0.1 releases prepare it for creation across all desktop stages.
Supports Firebase – Flutter developers use the Firebase platform (Google’s back-end platform for building mobile and web applications) as a backend-as-a-service, crash reporting, real-time database, etc. Firebase repository now includes source code and documentation, and plugins for quick use. This does not pull Flutter’s from integrating with third-party services like AWS Amplify.
Firebase Crashlytics – To enable developers to checkout errors and crash in real-time.
Flutter Casual Games Toolkit – It enables developers to develop and launch games from scratch. This also leads to setting integration-ready features like in-app purchases, play services, and Firebase, with a single-codebase and accelerated graphics being used to create new games using the Flutter platform.
Supports macOS and Linux Platforms – Along with this Flutter 3.0 also supports Windows platforms, ready for release across all desktop platforms.
Support for the macOS system Menu Bar and Cascading Menus – Flutter now lets us create platform-rendered menu bars on macOS by making use of a PlatformMenuBar widget. Flutter 3+ comes with PlatformMenu or PlatformMenuItem hierarchy. Menus contain MenuItems, Widgets without any visual representation, no events, but body from its build function. Rendering, shortcuts, and event handling for the menu are handled by plugins on the host platform. Cascading Menus
Flutter 3.0 implements cascading menus, but it is still in the initial development stage. The public API is not stable yet. The menus feature multiple levels of hierarchy. They are vertical and horizontal menu orientations. They are usable as a menu or sidebar. They feature context menu regions and menu button widgets. Elaborated menu style, radio, checkbox, slider menu items, the label of a given shortcut activator, suitable for use on desktop and mobile platforms.
Supports Dart 2.17 SDK – Flutter 3.0.1 has Dart 2.17 supportive of enums, override as default functions, API sample code, deploying and testing custom-written classes. It provides an updated Named parameters section that specifies named arguments anywhere. It has added documentation for super-initializer parameters, enumerated types section, and documented support for signing macOS and Windows executables compiled with DART Compile Exe. It supports templates by DART CREATE to standardized names.
Foldable Phone Support – It adds support for cut-out, fold, and hinge display features along with the SafeArea widget. It routes dialogues to the first screen, left for LTR configurations. Also, a widget HingeAvoidingModalWrapper is added to the top of the route layout to avoid the hinge.
iOS Variable Refresh Rate Support in Flutter 3 – Flutter applications can render at a 120-hertz refresh rate per second on iPhone 13 and iPad Pro devices. It has doubled since the previous update and is accountable for a smoother experience and faster animations.
Better Web App Lifecycle – With version 3.0 of Flutter, it is much easier to control web app lifecycles. It enables iOS Developers to initialize on the web using the flutter.loader JavaScript API. It lets display a loading indicator, preventing the app from loading based on a condition, and wait until the user adjures a button while showing the app. This release also enables developers to customize how a Flutter app initializes on the web – by using flutter.loader JavaScript API. It displays a loading indicator, prevents the app from loading based on a condition, and waits until the user presses a button. It now enables adding a splash screen, loading indicator, while loading resources, adding a plain HTML interactive landing page, loading the entry point script, initializing the Flutter engine, run the app.
Memory Improvement – Lighthouse shows the performance metrics for Flutter. Flutter 3+ providers’ tools and APIs to get the performance metrics. It fixes janky animations, uses memory wisely, and accommodates apps of measurable size.
Image Decoding – Image 3.2.0 provides web and server apps to load, manipulate, and save images with various image file formats like JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, WebP, and TIFF. Now Flutter Web Interface can automatically perceive and deploy API for imagecoder, in the browser. It leverages the browser’s built-in image codecs, resulting in a 2X improvement in loading images.
Supports International Text Input on All desktop Platforms – Flutter 3 brings in customized TextformField to input Phone Numbers along with the drop-down to choose the country code.
Material Design 3 – Google’s in-house design language – Material Design version 3 comprises a dynamic and updated colour system, visual effects, typography, extends ThemeData, re-implementing lerp, and copyWith, Flutter 3 has ThemeData.extensions to add anything to the material library’s theme data.
Personalized Advertisements – Google makes room to include personalized ads necessitating Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), and making it easier for publishers by replacing Consent SDK with User Messaging Platform (UMP) SDK in Flutter.
Deprecating Windows 7/8 – Flutter 3.0 does not block the development of older versions of Windows (7, 8,8.1) but yet it recommends development on Windows 10.
Sunsetting 32-bit iOS/iOS 9/iOS 10 – Flutter supports the 32-bit version of iOS and subsides versions 9 and 10 of iOS. This will affect iPhone 4S, 5C, and generation 3 and 4 devices. It will also affect iPad devices.
iOS variable refresh rate support – Flutter supports a variable refresh rate of 120 Hz and slow refresh rates down to 24HZ or 10 HZ. iPhone 13 Pro implements it. This dynamic switching between Small and low-speed animations, animation type, alpha/colour transitions, and small movements, makes the Flutter system insulate the ProMotion actual refresh rate, taking advantage of power-saving opportunities. Flutter framework animation features handle frame pacing automatically including UIKIt, SpriteKit, SwiftUI, and CAAnimation. It provides time-paced content to ProMotion Display.
Flutter 3.0, 3.0.1 marks Google’s feat in attracting more businesses to its achiever’s club. With sublime experience and compatibility across multiple platforms, it is advisable to hire professional Flutter Developers to create highly performant iPhone applications, which is making companies like ByteDance, WeChat, SHEIN, Betterment, and BMW bet on Flutter. Intrigued? Get in touch with us quickly and easily. We are happy to help!
Neeti Kotia is a technology journalist who seeks to analyze the advancements and developments in technology that affect our everyday lives. Her articles primarily focus upon the business, social, cultural, and entertainment side of the technology sector.
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