We’re happy to announce that we have a new managing partner on board – Rami Wazni. With over two decades of experience in the software development industry, Wazni will be responsible for overseeing Appstronauts’ North American division and helping to increase our presence in the region.
With geolocation, you offer extra value to your app’s users and increase the competitive advantage. And it’s super easy to implement with Ionic. Discover what are the benefits and how to do it.
Flutter is a new framework for cross-platform app development, but there’s already a lot of positive noise around it. Many developers name it the best cross-platform SDK ever made. Therefore, we’ve decided to check this out. Let’s discover Flutter’s features and pros and cons of using this cross-platform framework.
In our company, we specialize in cross-platform development, and our chosen framework for years was Ionic (if you’re curious why check “Why Should You Consider Ionic for Your Mobile App?”). But as every developer do, we also continuously look for new tools to build even better, high-performing cross-platform apps. Therefore, we got curious about Flutter – the new cross-platform SDK released by Google.
Many developers were claiming that it solves cross-platform development issues and is the best cross-platform framework ever made. We’ve decided to do some research and tests to check for ourselves what Flutter is and how can it be beneficial for our clients. No matter if you’re a business owner or a developer, you may discover a lot from our investigation, so check the results!
What is Flutter? Flutter is an open-source, free mobile SDK (Software Development Kit) for cross-platform development, released by Google. It’s a framework with widgets and tools that allows building apps for Android and iOS with only one codebase. One code works on both platforms, and, what’s more, your app looks and acts like a native one, with all the native interface elements. As a result, users don’t feel a difference between a Flutter app and a native app.
Google announced the framework in February 2018 at the Mobile World Congress. Since then, they constantly expand their potential. Flutter gains new powers and Google actively promotes it. Also, the company used it to create a Google Ads app. But what is so extraordinary about Flutter, that would make it better than other frameworks built by giants, like React Native from Facebook or Xamarin from Microsoft?
Cross-platform apps most often have slightly worse performance than native ones. In the case of frameworks like React Native, they need additional “bridge” to access platform widgets, responsible for animations, swiping and transitions. Importantly, the widgets are accessed a lot, and each time the code needs to pass the “bridge”. It results in a slightly lower performance. Although, Flutter has an answer to that issue.
To create the Flutter app, we need to use a programming language named Dart. It is compiled into native code ahead-of-time, which means, already during the building process. In consequence, it doesn’t need any bridge, and there’s no performance gap. The framework changed everything in the case of the layout. Traditionally, layout determines the position or size of widgets. Developers write rules to determine a widget and these rules interact with each other. As a consequence, they make the app slower. In Flutter, it’s the other way around: almost everything is a widget, and each widget has its own, specified layout model. In consequence, that allows for even better performance.
Moreover, Flutter provides its own widgets instead of platform ones. And it resolves another problem, connected to creating the same design for each platform quickly and customizing it. With Flutter widgets, apps look the same on each platform. What is more, they look the same on each system’s version. Typically, adjusting the look of the app to the older OS versions requires time and a lot of testing. With Flutter, we can be sure that our app will look perfect, and it may look the same also after the system’s updates.
It’s time, to sum up everything we’ve learned about Flutter into the framework’s advantages and disadvantages to make your decision about trying it out a little bit easier. We are going to present it from two points of view: business owner’s and developer’s one.
Let’s start with the business owner’s perspective. When should you choose this framework to build a mobile app for your company? What to take into account while making a decision?
Now, let’s check out what features of Flutter are essential from a developer’s point of view.
At Appstronauts, we’re really excited about this new and promising framework. Our developers are already testing it, learning how to develop flawless apps with this SDK and becoming masters of Dart. We’ll be delighted to share our thoughts and best practices with your company. If you are looking for a Flutter app development company, just drop us a message about your project at hello@appstronauts.co.
Enter Appium, an open-source automation framework that has revolutionized the way mobile app testing is conducted. By leveraging the power of Appium’s capabilities, developers can now automate end-to-end tests for Ionic apps, enabling them to detect and address potential issues early on in the development cycle.
Creating native mobile apps for multiple platforms is an expensive process, which also requires a lot of time and competencies.
Svelte is gaining popularity among many developing applications IT companies. We were able to find out what these companies feel about using Svelte while working on the app development. If you are also interested
