Google has added new features to its popular Flutter application development tool. Application developers should soon be able to develop more advanced web-based applications.
Flutter is a popular open-source development tool that makes it easier to build interfaces for applications. The tool helps developers build a single interface that will automatically work with well-known operating systems such as Chrome, Android, iOS, Windows and Linux.
With this single interface, applications and the underlying services work more efficiently across all platforms, eliminating the need to develop separate versions. This saves time and money. In addition, it allows Google to better support the development ecosystem associated with its products.
New features
The tech giant intends to make Flutter more suitable for developing web applications suitable for cross-platform use. The newly added improvements to the tool should further contribute to this.
An important part of the update is the addition of better support for improved graphics. By default, visual components are made visible in Flutter with the HTML DOM. This is the technology that browsers use to organize web pages. Google has now added an experimental feature to Flutter that enables applications to use the high-performance Skia graphics engine instead of HTML DOM.
Among other things, Skia provides all the graphics capabilities of the Google Chrome browser. Among other things, the graphics engine offers higher rendering speeds than the standard HTML DOM technology. This allows developers to create (visually) better web applications.
Accelerated text rendering
Another new improvement to Flutter is the faster loading time of text within applications. With an opt-in feature, developers can now speed up the rendering of text layouts within web applications by six times. It speeds up the scrolling speed as well.
Other added functionality
Google also introduces features to make working with Flutter easier. The basic functionality includes support for a back key in browsers, keyboard scrolling and the ability to copy and paste texts.