Its Android and iOS application development kit can now be used in production
Google released this week the Beta 3 version of Flutter, the SDK (Software Development Kit) that allows to develop native applications whose code runs on Android and iOS at the same time.
Most of the time, mobile application developers are forced to create their apps for Android and iOS. Which amounts to creating the same application twice. Google has created Flutter to solve this problem and increase developer productivity. "That's why we built Flutter: to provide a new path for mobile development, focused primarily on native performance, advanced visuals, and significantly improving developer speed and productivity," said a member of the Flutter team in a blog post.
Announced for the first time with its alpha version in 2017, Flutter can now, according to Google engineers, be used in production. Development tools for Android Studio, Visual Studio Code, Dart 2 and many other media have been made available to developers to familiarize themselves with the SDK.
Flutter offers several features such as automatic reloading that allows for rapid development, expressive and flexible designs with customizable UI widgets and animation libraries. According to Google, it also offers high quality experiences on all devices and platforms.
Google claims to be pleasantly surprised by the strong adoption of the SDK which version Beta 1 was launched just 10 weeks ago at the Mobile World Congress. Several applications developed with SDKs have been released. Google states that "one of the most popular is the companion app for the award-winning Hamilton Broadway musical, built by Posse Digital, with millions of monthly users, and an average rating of 4.6 on Play Store."
In addition, Alibaba announced this week the adoption of Flutter for its application Xianyu which has more than twenty million monthly active users. Groupon also uses Flutter for its merchant application.
Google is planning to release Flutter version 1.0 next year and is providing developers with enough technical content, a new set of codelabs and a Udacity course to learn how to use the new SDK.
Source : https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/05/ready-for-production-apps-flutter-beta-3.html
