Hi, my name is Wastik Ansari, and I'm a Flutter App developer. Google I/O had some big news this year, So I'm going to recap everything you need to know in under five minutes. Start the clock. First up, let's talk about six packs. No, not those. Or those either. Six packs means I am going to tell you 6 points which google has announced in google I/O 2022.
- Flutter 3
- DevTools
- Crashlytics / Firebase
- Dart 2.17
- Put Flutter to Work
- Flutter Casual Game Toolkit
Flutter 3
Google launched Flutter with a vision to enable developers to paint pixels on any screen from a single code base. Flutter one supported two key platforms, Android and IOS, but we had a long way to go. So Google I/O this year was a bit of a full circle moment for Flutter. Just three years after that initial launch, google released Flutter 3, which includes support for Mac OS and Linux apps built in Flutter, letting you create high-quality, beautiful experiences on six different platforms all from a single code base. There's little time to get sentimental, though.
Flutter 3 is packed with exciting updates, so we better get going. Let's start with desktop, and Mac OS more specifically. You can now build apps with that Mac OS look and feel, like Superlist, along with the ability to sign your executables so users don't get awkward warnings about untrusted publishers. Because come on, you're trustworthy.
There are now also two versions of the Flutter SDK for Mac OS, one for Apple Silicon and one for Intel processors, enabling developers and users alike to run Flutter natively regardless of their system's architecture.
- Apple Silicon
- Intel Processors
If you're interested in learning more about Flutter on the desktop, check out flutter official documentation. On the web, flutter team added new APIs to give you more control over your apps' initialization. Also taken advantage of some of the latest web standards to improve on things like image decoding and scrolling performance. If you want more in-depth coverage of Flutter on the web, check out Kevin's talk on youtube. Also, if you're interested in not only Flutter on the web, but also the web in Flutter, check out Andrew's workshop on adding a web view to your mobile app.
That gets us to mobile, where added support for material through widgets, re-architectured platform views on Android to improve native inline ads and worked with Microsoft to introduce support for foldable phones. There were a lot of updates.
2. DevTools
Flutter 3 also adds new performance focused features to the Flutter DevTools. You can now capture your Flutter build, layout, and pane events with DevTools. You can also now turn off certain rendering types like clipping, opacity, and shapes to really get to the bottom of any rendering issues that may be affecting your app's performance. You could find this on the performance panel in the Flutter DevTools.
3. Crashlytics / Firebase
Flutter team know a lot of you use Firebase, flutter team worked with the Firebase team to make Flutter and Firebase work even better together, including Crashlytics support for Flutter apps. It's such a big deal.
4. Dart 2.17
The Flutter team announced Dart 2.17, featuring a host of new features and performance improvements. One of the most exciting improvements is within enums, which now support almost everything you can do with a regular class. If you're interested in concurrency and parallelism in Dart, check out Michael T. And Michael G's talk on when, why, and how to multithread.
5. Put Flutter to Work
Now, if you've ever thought to yourself, Flutter seems cool, but I'm not sure how it performed in this app I've already published, I've got some good news for you. google announced a new project called Put Flutter To Work, where we provide a realistic example of how Flutter can save development cycles and make it as easy as humanly possible to try Flutter in your own apps. This is a sample application and demo rolled into one, and you can find it on GitHub. Within the repo, you'll find a Flutter module for capturing user sentiment and three native news feed apps, one each for the web, Android, and iOS. Our hope is that you can take the code right from the repo and drop it into your own app to see how Flutter might work in your own stuff. The code can be found at flutter.dev/go/try. So what have we got now, five things? So let’s talk about what flutter has announced in number six.
6. Flutter Casual Game Toolkit
The Google team noticed that lots of game developers have been using Flutter to build casual games– think word puzzles, slide puzzles, et cetera. So flutter team put together something we think will help to make the game building process easier. The Flutter Casual Games Toolkit is a starter pack to help you get your mobile casual game from idea to launch. The toolkit includes a sample app, community spaces, information on credits from Google Ads and Cloud, and more learning materials. All of this can be accessed at flutter.dev/games. Now, I think that's everything, except, well you.
Community
Over the last several months, the Flutter community has been nothing short of incredible. We saw you push your creativity to the limits in the puzzle hack, jump to submit the apps you've been working so hard on to showcase when flutter announced Flutter on Windows, and flutter recently had the pleasure of seeing you all meet up in person and gatherings all over the world through Flutter Festivals. We really do think flutter got the best community out there and can't thank you enough for the energy you bring to your work. If you're interested in learning more about anything I mentioned, watch What's New in Flutter or head to flutter.dev/events/io-22 to see all that google flutter team announced and hear more from members of the team.