At an online event, Google announced Flutter 2, the latest version of its open-source user interface toolkit for building mobile apps.
Flutter, in its initial versions, allowed developers to create apps that run on both Android and iOS.
While Flutter started focusing on mobile when it first launched a couple of years ago, it has proliferated in recent years, and with version 2, Flutter now supports web and desktop apps.
Flutter 2 users can now use the same program resource to create native applications for five operating systems: Windows, Android, iOS, Mac and Linux.
In addition to web experiences targeting browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
Flutter 2 can also be embedded in cars, TVs, and smart home devices, providing a more ubiquitous experience.
With the release of Flutter 2, Google’s UI toolkit has officially evolved from a mobile framework to a portable framework, allowing applications to run virtually anywhere there is a screen.
Perhaps the biggest news in this release is Flutter’s support for stable web applications.
Developers can now take existing apps – of which there are more than 150,000 – to the web, or they can create new web apps based on Flutter.
Flutter 2 supports three main types of web applications:
- PWA working progressive web applications as native desktop and mobile applications and provide major native application capabilities.
- Single page SPA applications that are downloaded one time and then the data is transferred from the Internet services.
- Flutter mobile apps that can be ported to the web, allowing shared code experience.
Google announced that Canonical, the manufacturer of Ubuntu, is relying on Flutter and making it the default for all future desktop and mobile applications.
Microsoft is also expanding its support and working with Google to support Windows for Flutter, and Microsoft is making contributions to the Flutter Engine to help support foldable Android devices.
Google, through Flutter, is trying to fulfill the decades-long dream of writing code once and running it everywhere, and with the ability to access 6 platforms simultaneously, the dream began to come true.