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It takes hardly any research to understand the promises of cross-platform development for mobile app projects. Mobile app development services by building an app that looks and feels like a native app across all platforms and devices, not only reduce the cost of development but also bring a consistent interactive user experience for the end users in a quick time.
For some years, Flutter and React Native have become the ideal cross-platform framework choices for app projects. Flutter has already surpassed React Native as most small enterprises and startups found it great for shaping their digital footprints simultaneously on iOS and Android mobile platforms, desktops,s, and the web.
Here in this blog post, we are going to explain the key value propositions of Flutter for most app projects.
A brief description of Flutter
Google created Flutter as a widget-based modular UI development kit for developing native-looking apps on iOS, Android, desktop, and the web. It comes loaded with a multitude of UI widgets as well as a large repository of component libraries that can be used by developers to customize the user experience as per their requirements. The programming language used by Flutter is Dart, an object-oriented language with a lower footprint and concise coding capabilities.
- In Flutter the UI development is done through platform-specific native widgets.
- Flutter offers the Hot Reloading feature to help developers and testers to review code changes and their impact instantly on a running app.
- Flutter, in contrast, to React Native or other cross-platform frameworks, does away with the JavaScript bridge for connecting to the native UI layer.
- Flutter comes with a whole array of readily usable widgets for building the UI without using the widgets of device manufacturers.
- Flutter offers inbuilt backend support with Google Firebase.
Single codebase for Mobile, Web, and Desktop
Flutter as a cross-platform development framework not only adheres to the ‘write-once & run everywhere’ practice for mobile platforms but allows running the same codebase for web and desktop platforms as well. The Flutter 3.0 version further extended the desktop support by covering all platforms including Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Flutter reuses up to 80% of the codebase and for the remaining, it uses its platform-specific UI widgets and appropriate engines for rendering. Ultimately this promises to bring both the ease of hybrid development approach and quality of native app development.
A rich repository of custom UI widgets
Flutter because of the ease of customizing user experience is popular for mobile app projects among small businesses and startups. Flutter comes with a lot of custom UI widgets for different mobile OS platforms such as Android and iOS and also for web-specific Material Design.
Because of these modular UI widgets, app projects always have a wider scope of customization and can shape the user-specific and a lot leaner user experience similar to native apps. Thanks to these custom UI widgets app projects can easily shape the look and feel of apps to native perfection while ensuring brand elements throughout.
Hot Reload for real-time code review
Flutter comes with the Hot Reload feature that helps developers to review the code by seeing the impact on a running app. This ultimately ensures faster development compared to other cross-platform frameworks just because developers do not need to reload the app following any code changes.
App developers can instantly see the effects of the code changes in a running app. Apart from helping developers to code and review at a faster pace, the same feature also helps the QA testers to speed up their testing processes.
Ideal for incremental development
App projects with Flutter can build a basic app with just core features and can develop a proof of concept to show to the investors. The modularity of Flutter makes this possible. Thanks to this approach developers can save a large amount of their time and they can update the app in a sure-footed manner based on user feedback.
This incremental development approach known as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) best suits the Flutter framework. A Flutter-built MVP app enjoys the benefits of faster and low-budget development while keeping options open for further value additions based on user feedback.
Unit testing
Unit testing is a key requirement for any app project now and this is another area where Flutter proves to be highly effective. For writing and compiling Unit Test code scripts Flutter offers some great support.
Particularly for unit testing on the Android platform, the Flutter framework can run inside the JVM and can deliver mock Android classes. Thanks to this the code for the unit test script just needs a compilation time of 5 seconds and a run time of 1.5 seconds.
Firebase backend support is inbuilt
Flutter comes loaded with the plugin to access Google Firebase for the backend development. Though Flutter is primarily a fully-equipped frontend framework, considering the Firebase backend support Flutter offers nearly the capabilities of a complete technology stack comprising both frontend and backend.
No wonder, Flutter coupled up with Google Firebase in many quarters is regarded as a complete technology stack for mobile and web projects.
Huge support from Google and the developer community
Flutter as we all know started its journey way back in 2017 and in just 3 years it matched the popularity of the reigning React Native cross-platform framework then last year it surpassed React Native to become the most loved development framework for cross-platform projects.
This ultimately results in huge patronage and support of a worldwide developer community who are adding to the key Flutter capabilities on a continuous basis. Last but not the least, Flutter always enjoys the value-driven support of Google through continuous updates and new features and capabilities.
What’s Next?
Can you think of a cross-platform development framework that offers so diverse and high-end capabilities for every kind of app project? This is why Flutter seems to be all set for becoming the most valued framework for app development in the years to come. The dominance of Flutter is going to be over any time soon.
