Flutter is a very common term in the world of Mobile App Development that needs no introduction at the present date. It is Google's most popular cross-platform programming framework that has earned huge popularity in modern times. Many organizations are seen hiring flutter developers to generate their mobile apps very frequently in recent years.

The framework is used for creating mobile apps for platforms like Android, iOS, web, and desktop using a single codebase. Google is seen releasing the updated versions of the framework consistently to address several issues encountered in the previous versions and provide the developers with a more enhanced user experience.

Google has launched the latest version of Flutter i.e. Flutter 1.7 as well as Dart i.e. Dart 2.8 recently. Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8 Software Development Kits are the first stable releases of the year 2020. In this latest version of Flutter, Google has settled 6,339 issues following the release of version 1.12. The cross-platform programming framework now provides an enhanced UI framework for creating iOS, Android, Fuchsia, and desktop apps.

What’s New in Flutter 1.17
Google released the latest version of Flutter on May 6, 2020. Although this stable version has a lot of things to offer, the Google team mainly concentrated on enhancing the performance as well as accessibility. Let us discuss the details in depth

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Performance improvements
The latest release of Flutter has incorporated the fixing of a large number of bugs to ensure improved performance and a wonderful user experience. The updates included in Flutter 1.17 contribute towards enhancing the mobile performance with up to 20 to 37% speedup for the default navigation case. A notable change in the size of the applications developed with Flutter’s 1.17 version can also be observed. The size of the apps developed with Flutter 1.17 will now be significantly less than the applications developed with its previous versions.

Metal Support for iOS Apps
Flutter 1.17 provides backing for ‘Metal’ which is a low-level graphics API offered by Apple. Metal allows developers to have straightforward access to the underlying GPU of iOS devices. The enhanced Metal support provided by Flutter 1.17 increases the performing speed of iOS apps by approximately 50%. The update can be mainly implemented on iOS version 8.0 and above.

Support for New Material Widgets
The latest version of Flutter allows the development of applications by making use of NavigationRail which is a widget update that permits the attachment of desktop and mobile elements to the apps. There are two more widget updates correlated with Flutter 1.17, which are specifically for the DatePicker and TextSelection.

Google Fonts for Flutter
Flutter’s version 1.17 has made the Google fonts available for Flutter applications. This permits developers to try any of the fonts from fonts.google.com in their Flutter apps. The developers are free to choose if they desire to bundle the font with the APK or want to download it by the API.

Other Updates

1. The gallery size of Flutter is decreased to 8.1 MB from 9.6 MB.
2. The animation packages are enhanced that can eventually contribute to speedy performance.
3. Flutter 1.17 has improved the accessibility and internationalization of the apps.
4. The release has also fixed the issue associated with the Samsung keyboard faced by several developers before.
5. Google has fixed the hot reload issue and advanced the feature as well.
6. AndroidX is now the only choice for those developers who are targeting Andriod while building a new project.
7. Assistance incorporated for the ‘Fast Start’ option while targeting Android.

Dart 2.8
Dart is the programming language employed for creating applications in Flutter and Dart 2.8 is the latest version of the language in which Google has included several significant changes. Let us discuss what new features are introduced in the latest version of the language

What’s New in Dart 2.8

Enhancements in the pub tool
Pub client tool is utilized to handle the packages that are downloaded from the pub dev package repository. In Dart 2.8, Google has enhanced the performance of pubs get by supplementing help to accomplish parallel fetching of packages and yielding pub-run precompilation. Google has also incorporated a new tool called pub outdated to make sure that package dependencies are maintained up to date.

Assistance for null safety
Null references are the general cause of application crashes. It occurs when the application code tries to read a variable whose value is null. In Dart 2.8, Google is planning to combine assistance for sound null safety that will make sure that all the declared variables contain non-null values.

Incorporating strong null safety is a big step that may create breaks in the language and the associated libraries. Hence, Google requires developers to be informed of these breaking innovations and file the issues that they come across on their issue tracker.

Other Updates
Dev plugin channels are introduced to aid the developers.
An additional tab is appended with the Dart 2.8 networking tool that helps in monitoring each network request. It can be accomplished manually or by making use of a tab.

Conclusion
Google seems to be constantly working on Flutter to come up with the solutions to the problems developers are facing while developing the applications. With every new release of Flutter, Google is introducing new features and trying to fix the maximum number of encountered issues to provide an enhanced development experience. Hence, the combination of Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8 will surely aid you to create even stronger mobile applications across various platforms. Are you enthusiastic to utilize the latest Flutter and Dart versions for your next app, get in touch with us today to get the assistance of the best Flutter developers in the industry!