Flutter, Google’s open-source and cross-platform UI toolkit, originally geared towards mobile development, has expanded its Web development support and now incorporates Swift for native iOS projects and Kotlin for Android. The recent Flutter 1.9 release, unveiled at Google Developer Days in China, marked the toolkit’s most significant update, featuring 1,548 pull requests from 108 developers.
The release highlighted the progress in Web development support, emphasizing the integration of Flutter’s Web capabilities into the main Flutter repository. Chris Sells, the project program manager, called it a substantial step towards enabling production support for Web development using Flutter, even though Web support is still in its early stages.
Two community experiments were showcased to demonstrate Flutter’s Web functionality in action: Flutter Widget Livebook, which exhibits live Flutter widgets in a browser, and Panache, a tool for creating Flutter themes downloadable for direct integration into code.
The release also brought improvements to the toolchain, with new projects defaulting to Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. While Dart remains Flutter’s primary language, the Dart 2.5 update introduces ML Complete, a machine learning-powered code completion experience, and dart:ffi, a foreign function interface for direct C code invocation from Dart.
Flutter 1.9 includes support for macOS Catalina and iOS 13, ensuring compatibility with Apple’s latest releases. Additionally, Material widgets, integral components of the open-source design system, received upgrades. The release boasts expanded language support, adding 24 new languages from Afrikaans to Zulu.
For further details, the release notes provide comprehensive information on breaking API changes, fixes, and other enhancements.