Windows was Dev Preview. Now it’s Alpha, alongside with Linux and MacOs.
Web is Beta for some time now. Maybe it wasn’t evolved to Stable because some architectural changes being made to support Desktop could affect it. Maybe the PWA support intended to it is a growing not stable enough thing as architecture. Maybe when Desktop reaches Beta, Web goes Stable?
The plan before the pandemic was to reach December with Android, iOS, Web, Windows, MacOS and Linux working… But is “working” Stable? Or just Alpha or Beta?
When Google started the movement that Microsoft avoided as hell for the same reasons Apple avoids (not spreading apps to other platforms), Microsoft saw that they could not run away from the fight and lose it, as they did with the mobile systems. So now, Microsoft AND Google are the main contenders.
For now I don’t see Swift as a serious cross-platform contender. Unless and until, someone comes up with an Xcode like IDE with a crossplatform version of AppKit/UIKit… without a consistent way to build a UI, the reset is just a mind exercise
Flutter currently needs an external designer, DotNet6 have XAML designer, both you usually don’t need it if you get used to insert components coding them with live rendering.
Flutter currently. DotNet6
Flutter/DotNet6
Note: I’m talking about the mature position after September/2021.
so right now, excluding mobile, you have to compile on the target platform (mac for mac, win for win, lin for lin). although there is going to be some changes to that but I dont see a lot. Flutter/Dart uses Xcode on Mac to compile Mac. and uses MS’s compiler on Windows and Gcc on Linux.
Mobile, you have to compile iOS on a Mac (because of Xcode) and Android is anywhere you have Android Studio.
Technically there is not a drag-n-drop for Flutter. But you can use Adobe Err-Cant-Think-Of-It org Figma or there is a 3rd Graphical Designer that you can export the drawings into Flutter code. And supposedly the auto code generation doesnt suck. I dont use those tools as I suck at them so I cant say for sure.
One benefit of Flutter/Dart is you can use whatever editor you want (within reason). I use VSCode but I know people that use Android Studio or VIM or NotePad++ or whatever. Both VSCode/Android Studio/IntelliJ editors have nice built in functionality that makes coding easier.
as for WIndows being “Alpha”… yeah… I would still say “Early Alpha”… Macos/Linux is still more mature. But that being said, Google is working hard at making Macos/Linux/Windows on equal footings.
And as an example. I wrote a simple App that works on both Macos/Linux for a friend of mine and he asked if I could do Android. The only thing I had to do was do different screens as the layout I designed for desktop would not scale/resize down to mobile nicely. then I have an inline if statement that checks for being on mobile and returns either the mobile screen or desktop screen. I can compile it for iOS but they dont have any iDevices.
I have consider getting a Pine64 Pro Book (think raspberry pi notebook the weight of a chrombook but with a real o/s on it) and doing flutter dev work when not at home on it. unless I am compiling I need almost no (cpu) power. but I have been good so far and held off on buying one.
Nor true. I don’t see a “needs to be integrated” in that topic. So I filled the gaps. And Yep, the new engine allows mixing pixel perfect and native ones.
For example, you could do this if you wanted in Windows:
typedef MessageBoxNative = Int32 Function(
IntPtr hWnd, Pointer<Utf16> lpText, Pointer<Utf16> lpCaption, Int32 uType);
typedef MessageBoxDart = int Function(
int hWnd, Pointer<Utf16> lpText, Pointer<Utf16> lpCaption, int uType);
final user32 = DynamicLibrary.open('user32.dll');
final MessageBox =
user32.lookupFunction<MessageBoxNative, MessageBoxDart>('MessageBoxW');
final result = MessageBox(
0, // No owner window
Utf16.toUtf16('Test message'), // Message
Utf16.toUtf16('Window caption'), // Window title
0 // OK button only
);
You could do that, but (a) you’d be writing native Win32 code, which is not at all the same thing as drag-and-dropping a native control onto a form in a UI builder, and then you’d have to write completely different native code on MacOS, and completely different native code on Linux, which requires you to know a fair amount about three different non-Dart languages and three different non-Flutter platform frameworks, and you just have to hope all the controls work roughly the same on all the platforms or else get into some tricky and tedious modifications; (b) this is merely a mechanism (and an onerous one at that) to inject an occasional native control into a Flutter app, and there will likely be issues with how smoothly the native controls interact with Flutter widgets, memory management in some cases, and so on.
C’mon, that’s not within a thousand miles of what it means to have native controls in Xojo.
And having a few very primitive UI designers tossed together by random third parties with dubious support, designers featuring a variety of interesting ways of kinda-sorta generating Flutter apps, is also not even remotely the same experience as using Xojo.
Yes, of course it’s a good thing. The Xojo UI builder is far more polished and completely integrated with the language, framework, and IDE. It’s obviously a much better experience than using a primitive experiment of a UI builder thrown together by some random third-party.
Well… Firstly Xojo is far from “polished” and have half dozen of half baked components, second there’s not just that website that uses a free code published on github as a helper for those needing it, you could play with it if you wished for and even write your own version. It’s open. For the side of “I prefer to use some tooling backed by a large company” Is Adobe good enough for you as a partner for such task? They are creating visual tools for Flutter. Third, it’s optional using such tools, you mostly don’t need them.
whats wrong with having a common designer nicely integrated into the IDE ?
while VB was derided as a toy it was, at one point the MOST used language for software in the world
And lots of other tools have followed in that genre (Delphi, Xojo, Lazarus, and others)
design languages (html xml xaml etc) dont resiict you to only one underlying implementation when you finally compile
if you dont want to use a UI designer tool - great - dont (I think a tool _should_make that possible too)
But if you do why should I need one on Windows one on macOS and yet another on Linux etc ?
currently. DotNet6