Google Announced Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8, the First Stable Release of 2020

Flutter is a very common term in the world of Mobile App Development that needs no introduction at the present date. It is Google’s most popular cross-platform programming framework that has earned huge popularity in modern times. In fact, many organizations are seen hiring skilled Flutter developers to generate their mobile apps very frequently in recent years. 

The framework is used for creating mobile apps for platforms like Android, iOS, web, and desktop using a single codebase. Google is seen releasing the updated versions of the framework on a consistent basis in order to address a number of issues encountered in the previous versions and provide the developers with more enhanced user-experience. 

Google has launched IS. Flutter 1.7 as well as Dart i.e. Dart 2.8 recently. In fact, Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8 Software Development Kits are the first stable releases of the year 2020. . The cross-platform programming framework now provides an enhanced UI framework for creating iOS, Android, Fuchsia, and desktop apps. 

What’s New in Flutter 1.17

Google released the latest version of Flutter on May 6, 2020. Let us discuss the details in depth

• Performance improvements

The latest release of Flutter has incorporated the fixing of a large number of bugs to ensure an improved performance and wonderful user experience. The updates included in Flutter 1.17 contributes towards enhancing the mobile performance with up to 20 to 37% speedup for the default navigation case. he size of the apps developed with Flutter 1.17 will now be significantly less than the applications developed with its previous versions.

• Metal Support for iOS Apps

Flutter 1.17 provides backing for ‘Metal’ which is a low-level graphics API offered by Apple. The enhanced Metal support provided by Flutter 1.17 increases the performing speed of iOS apps by approximately 50%. The update can be mainly implemented on the iOS version 8.0 and above. 

• Support for New Material Widgets

The latest version of Flutter allows the development of applications by making use of  NavigationRail which is a widget update that permits to attach desktop and mobile elements to the apps. There are two more widget updates correlated with the Flutter 1.17, which are specifically for the DatePicker and TextSelection.

• Google Fonts for Flutter

Flutter’s version 1.17 This permits developers to try any of the fonts from fonts.google.com in their Flutter apps. The developers are free to choose if they desire to bundle the font with the APK or want to download it by the API.

Other Updates

1. The gallery size of Flutter is decreased to 8.1 MB from 9.6 MB.
2. The release has also fixed the issue associated with the Samsung keyboard faced by a number of developers before.
3. Google has fixed the hot reload issue and advanced the feature as well.
4. AndroidX is now the only choice for those developers who are targeting Andriod while building a new project.
5. Assistance incorporated for the ‘Fast Start’ option while targeting Android.

Dart 2.8

Dart is the programming language employed for creating applications in Flutter and Dart 2.8 is the latest version of the language in which Google has included a number of significant changes.

What’s New in Dart 2.8

• Enhancements in the pub tool

Pub client tool is utilized to handle the packages that are downloaded from the pub.dev package repository.

• Assistance for null safety

It occurs when the application code tries to read a variable whose value is null.

Incorporating strong null safety is a big step that may create breaks in the language and the associated libraries.

Other Updates

1. An additional tab is appended with the Dart 2.8 networking tool that helps in monitoring each network request. It can be accomplished manually or by making use of a tab.

Conclusion

Google seems to be constantly working on Flutter to come up with the solutions of the problems developers are facing while developing the applications. Hence, the combination of Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8 will surely aid you to create even more stronger mobile applications across various platforms.