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Google’s Flutter mobile toolkit targets both iOS and Android

By creating native ARM code, Google is claiming that Flutter enables the flexibility of cross-platform developing without compromising on performance. You can build to .apk files for Android or .ipa files for IoS applications, from a single codebase.

Automotive displays were cited as one example of embedded roles for Flutter.

A minimum refresh rate of 60 frames per second is supported, says Google, with the platform being capable of recomputing what to show every single frame.

Tim Neath, Group Product Manager for Flutter and Dart at Google, described it to Electronics Weekly as a toolkit for building embeddable UI components – enabling different layers of abstraction, by the use of classes, but also direct pixel control.

“We’re building momentum for Flutter,” he said ahead of the official launch. “We’ve moved from early adopter previews to being ready for primetime. It provides everything you need to build an interface.”

Material Design
According to Google, the Apple design language – such as sliders and nav bars – and Google’s Material Design concepts – such as textures and user-response cues – can be implemented via Flutter.

No virtual machines or emulation are involved, says Google. Using Skia, the system can paint directly to displays via the graphics subsystem. Video is embeddable as just another widget. The Raspberry Pi is among the platforms capable of supporting the new system.

Design in development
A key element of the new system, which was first previewed at Mobile World Congress back in February, is stateful hot reload (SHR), which means you can make changes to the code and see the results without restarting your app or losing its state.

This promises faster design/development iterations, with the immediate feedback of more traditional HTML/Javascript development, and the more direct involvement of designers.

There are two routes of use – building Flutter components into Android (or IoS) apps, or building Flutter ones that can incorporate Android-ready UI elements, such as Google Maps or a browser.

Open
Google says Flutter is an open source project with a BSD-style licence, and already includes the contributions of hundreds of developers from around the world.

A version of Flutter that will work on desktops is codenamed Hummingbird, and it is still being developed.

A gallery of Flutter-related pics can be seen below.