What’s all the Buzz about Flutter?

If you have been thinking about having a mobile application built for either yourself or your business and have done some research, you have probably come across Flutter during your search and want to learn more about it.

To start with, Flutter is an open-source SDK that mobile app developers can use to create native-looking Android and iOS mobile apps.  Perhaps the biggest advantage of Flutter is that it is a cross-platform tool that was developed to create both Android and iOS mobile applications from a single code base utilizing a modern framework.

Mobile apps built using Flutter are created using a simple object-oriented programming language called Dart.

Flutter focuses on the use of widgets to build mobile applications. User interfaces are created by combining different widgets. Each defines a structural element (such as a menu), a stylistic element (such as a font), a factor of the layout (like margins), or other items related to the application. Flutter does not utilize widgets from the hardware but instead has its own widgets that look native to either the Android OS or Apple iOS. Additionally, it’s also possible to create custom widgets if your application requires them.

While Flutter isn’t widely used yet, it is growing rapidly and has been used to build several very popular mobile applications, such as Alibaba, Reflectly, Birch Finance, and the Hamilton Musical app to name a few. Many other apps currently in the app stores have been built utilizing Flutter. You probably have some on your smartphone right now and didn’t even realize they were built using the Flutter framework.

Flutter has several benefits when compared to the traditional way of building mobile applications.

Fast and Simple

One of the most useful features of Flutter is the ability to instantly view the changes you made to the application on emulators, simulators, and hardware. Almost instantly, the updated code is reloaded with no need to restart. This is an exceptional feature that saves developers a great deal of time creating applications.

Increased Productivity

Since Flutter allows developers to utilize the same code base for both iOS and Android apps it saves a great deal of time and resources in the development process. Businesses looking to accelerate the timetable of bringing their apps to market or looking to contain costs will find Flutter is an excellent way to accomplish both of these goals.

Enhanced Performance

The Dart coding language utilized by Flutter compiles into native code so they will perform just like the native apps you have loved for years. As an additional benefit, you will find that since apps built using Flutter have their own widgets, the apps will not need to access OEM widgets, which translates into less mediated communication between the app and the platform. The end result is fast app startup times and fewer performance issues.

Improved Compatibility

Since Flutter widgets are built into the app and it’s not as dependent on the platform, it will reduce compatibility issues between different OS versions. This will save you time and money when you start testing your application.

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