What’s New in Flutter 2.0?
Tags: flutter, dart, android, ios
Published: 2021-04-09 12:13:12

Google’s Flutter is in the news just about everywhere. It is a fact that this well-known giant came into the limelight after introducing the Flutter 2.0 version. Following Flutter 1.0, Flutter 2.0 happens to be one of the most eagerly awaited releases of this platform right now. The team declared that the primary objective was to help the Flutter developers to create an app that provides a remarkable experience.

 
<b>What is new in Flutter 2.0?</b>

Flutter 2.0 has been introduced by Google with some remarkable features as well as fixes. Flutter has succeeded in closing more than 24,000 problems in this particular release, merging more than 17,000 PRs from more than 750 contributors. Several of the leading contributors happen to be Xu-Baolin, who has succeeded in contributing 46 PRs, and a14 who has succeeded in contributing 32 PRs.

According to Sneath, ecosystems do not develop overnight, and it is a fact that Flutter is nevertheless a new platform out there. However, they are of the notion that the 15,000 companies and packages represented above prove the fast development in filling the rest of the gaps. He also added that they are quite motivated by this continued development.

This appears to be the most celebrated release of Flutter with the #FlutterEngage as marketed by Tim Sneath, the product manager of Flutter. The Flutter team has often mentioned that it is a community endeavor responsible for the release of Flutter.

Users are allowed by this open-source platform to contribute to the enhancement of the platform, and they are accountable for the development of Flutter right now. Now we will come back to mention what is stored in the release of Flutter 2. March 3, 2021, is going to be remembered for the release of Flutter 2.0 features and Dart 2.12.

 <b>So, let us not waste any time and look at the new releases of Flutter 2.0.</b>

 
<b>Null Safety</b>

Null safety can be a significant sticking point for lots of developers attempting to move to Dart over Kotlin and other languages. Null safety will introduce types that cannot be null, thus enabling the compiler to comprehend that certain variables aren’t null and stay away from unwanted null checks.

Simultaneously, it likewise helps the Flutter developers avoid issues beforehand, given that the code is not going to compile if something is not handled correctly. It has been quite some time that null safety has been in testing, and the whole framework has been moved for working with null safety in a backward-compatible fashion.

One particular concern that individuals had beforehand was how present packages would function with null safety. At present, the most significant packages have been shifted already, or they will be shifted to null safety.

Nevertheless, a lot remains in the versions which happen to be non-null-safe. Once a package is used by an app that doesn’t make use of null safety, deprivation will run in the unreliable null safety mode. And it will run in the reliable null safety mode once all the dependencies have been shifted to null safety.

At present, null safety enables the developers to shrink the code’s size since it is possible to remove additional checks. Here, the intriguing thing is that Dart didn’t like to move to 3.0 with reliable null safety and remained in the 2.x version instead since null safety didn’t bring along any breaking modifications to the existing code, which happens to be rather inspiring given that so many changes have been made in the code.

 
<b>Web Reaches Stable</b>

After being declared as Project Hummingbird at the launch event of Flutter 1.0, Flutter Wave caused tremendous excitement since it was now possible for Flutter to get to the three major platforms, namely, Android, iOS, and web. Following 18 months, Flutter Web has become finally stable following a remarkable improvement in its performance.

Initially, Flutter Web came with certain obstacles. Firstly, it was imperative to create the widgets for making a responsive and immersive web experience. It was also essential to implement functionality like hover, which enabled the websites to look much more than a large mobile application. Finally, the dart2js compiler was used extensively since Dart was originally intended to replace JavaScript. Nevertheless, the web itself happens to be a complicated platform to handle.

The development of Progressive Web Apps happens to be a natural advantage of the Flutter Web declaration. Progressive Web Apps enable any site to behave like an app on mobile while retaining plenty of freedoms available with the web. It becomes quite easy to create Progressive Web Apps with existing code given that the Flutter code has been optimized already to handle mobile-sized layouts.

The web is becoming more and more stable every day, and therefore, an increasing number of packages provide support, making web support more complete.

<b>Flutter for Desktops</b>

Similar to the web, it is also possible to extend Flutter for supporting desktop applications. According to Sneath, a lot of work has been done by them to reach this particular stage, which includes providing internationalization support, for instance, innovative widgets such as DataTable and TreeView, and IME editors languages.

Flutter will enable developers to provide a native-like application experience on every single platform where it resides. This particular native-like experience will consist of mouse dragging with precision, selection of text pivot points, an inbuilt context menu, and so forth. It will now be possible for the developers to stop keyboard events even after initiating them. They will also get hold of the grab handles and move items effortlessly within the ReorderableListView widget.

One more addition happens to be the updated scrollbar widget facilitating interactiveness by using a thumb in the desktop application. This app will also depict mouse hovers in the page up and down tracks and the scrollbar. Besides this, it will also be possible for the developers to use the innovative ScrollbarTheme class to personalize the app according to their discretion.

The release of Flutter likewise helps to make smooth resizing for Mac OS and Windows. In case you are making any plans for deploying your application on stores that happen to be OS-specific, it will be a sensible idea to read the document offered by the Flutter community.

It is also possible for the developers to find info regarding beta channels if they want to try to use the beta for the Flutter desktop. However, unlike the beta version, quick bug fixes are not supported by the stable channel.

Moreover, while the Flutter community has advanced in the top-quality release, you can expect support for native-like text editing, accessibility, and integration with native menus.

Let's know here more features of Flutter 2.0 :https://www.rlogical.com/blog/whats-new-in-flutter-2.0/