Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google

Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by prohor on Friday November 06, 2015 @01:48AM (#10518128)

And at the same time another group at Google is working on Singular, again cross platform development for Android, iOS & Web (web is not for Flutter), which works in AnuglarJS-like fashion. There is a difference though, Singular doesn't go into widgets (you should use platform specific). Maybe they will be able to merry them, but I doubt, so we will need to choose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPP3ldo1ww

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9010424

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by stephen on Friday November 06, 2015 @07:44AM (#10519143)

I'm cautiously optimistic about Singular; they've "gone dark" and are implementing it internally, which is kind of disappointing.

But for someone (e.g. me) who:

a) thinks the skill set reuse of React Native is genius (reuse the UI framework/mental model, and purposefully not the widgets), but

b) doesn't like Javascript, I think Singular has the best chance at winning my personal mind share.

Of course, "doesn't like Javascript" is a minority mindset these days, so in terms of community/etc. I'm sure React Native is going to be very strong.

In terms of Flutter/Singular, Flutter trying to play the "write one app for N devices" is interesting...AFAIK, that's something React Native/Singular are explicitly trying to avoid, since historically it's resulted in sub-par UIs on each device.

But it would be an interesting coup if material design meant developers (and users) really did want/expect the same exact L&F on both Android and iOS.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by invalidname on Saturday November 07, 2015 @05:13AM (#10524347)

I am never basing architecture on small Google projects again. We use app engine which has horrible support and billing. We used to use GWT which is no longer maintained. I just don't trust Googles commitment to anything it releases. They throw stuff against the wall to see if it sticks and I ended up with sludge on the floor one time too many.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by stephen on Saturday November 07, 2015 @07:38PM (#10526848)

> We used to use GWT which is no longer maintained

I understand where you're coming from, but FWIW this is incorrect: Google has a team of ~4-5 engineers still actively making changes to GWT, and even currently prepping/testing a new release.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by devsquid on Friday November 06, 2015 @07:14AM (#10519050)

Interesting, I had not heard of this. Personally I find HTML to be the best layout system there is, besides animations, and I'm not even a web developer. I like Dart, but its not statically typed and Flutter uses its own layout system.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by pjmlp on Friday November 06, 2015 @01:31PM (#10521054)

Developing native GUIs since the mid-90's, I think there have been quite a few better solutions.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by Rapidwire on Friday November 06, 2015 @03:56PM (#10521982)

And those "few better solutions" would be?

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by pjmlp on Friday November 06, 2015 @04:21PM (#10522118)

- XAML

- XUL

- Layout managers like Motif, Swing, Tk, ...

I never had with them half the problems I do have making HTML/CSS work properly across browsers.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by Nitramp on Friday November 06, 2015 @11:02PM (#10523637)

Swing didn't have baseline alignment until Java 1.5 iirc, so you couldn't put a label next to a text box without it looking dorky. And the controls felt slightly uncanny on every platform.

No thanks, wouldn't buy again.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by pjmlp on Saturday November 07, 2015 @02:09AM (#10524031)

Swing is great if one bothers to learn how to use it, instead of relying on the default control behaviours.

What I mean by that, was being aware information like "Filthy Rich Clients" blog, http://filthyrichclients.org/

I have been out of the CSS loop in the last three years.

Can we finally center vertically without lots of tricks in a good way across browsers?

I am not a designer and never managed to control layout in HTML/CSS, as easily as, I do in all the native toolkits I have used thus far.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by zghst on Friday November 06, 2015 @10:35PM (#10523565)

...well you wouldn't have those problems with XML tags/HTML being used in an app with a framework that uses a custom layout system.

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Re:Flutter – Cross-platform mobile framework from Google by pjmlp on Saturday November 07, 2015 @02:11AM (#10524036)

But that isn't the W3C way anymore.

True, the XHTML + XML modules would have brought us there, but another path was chosen.

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