In the field of mobile application development, Flutter has won widespread recognition and adoption, becoming the Swiss Army Knife of cross-platform mobile application development. However, Flutter's charm is not limited to mobile platforms. It can also be used to develop desktop applications, providing developers with a brand new choice. This article will deeply explore the application of Flutter in desktop application development, as well as the current domestic novel cross-end development technology.
The Current State of Desktop Application Development
In the past, desktop application development often required the use of operating system-specific tools and languages such as C++, C#, Java, etc. This results in high development costs and maintenance difficulties. Although there are some cross-platform desktop development tools, such as Electron and Qt, they have some limitations in performance, user experience, and development efficiency. The emergence of Flutter has changed this landscape and brought new hope to desktop application development.
Advantages of Flutter desktop applications
1. Cross-platform One of Flutter’s biggest advantages is its cross-platform nature. You can use the same code base to build desktop applications on Windows, macOS, and Linux. This means you no longer need to develop and maintain applications separately for each platform, significantly reducing effort and costs.
2. Beautiful user interface Flutter provides a wealth of UI components and custom drawing capabilities, allowing developers to easily create beautiful and highly customized user interfaces. Whether it’s beautifully designed buttons, smooth animations, or complex charts, Flutter can meet your needs.
3. High-performance Flutter’s rendering engine (Skia) is high-performance and can achieve smooth animation and fast user interface response. This makes Flutter desktop applications comparable to or even surpass traditional desktop applications in terms of performance.
4. Rapid iteration and hot reload Flutter provides a hot reload function, allowing developers to quickly preview and debug application changes. This greatly speeds up development cycles, allowing developers to iterate and optimize applications faster.
5. Community support and plug-in ecosystem Flutter has an active developer community, which means you can easily find solutions and third-party plug-ins to meet various needs. Whether you need to interact with the native operating system or integrate third-party services, the Flutter community provides you with a wealth of resources.
scenes to be used
So, what kind of applications are suitable for using Flutter to develop desktop versions? Here are some suitable scenarios:
1. Cross-platform applications If your goal is to develop once and deploy on multiple platforms, then Flutter is an ideal choice. You can use the same code base to build desktop apps on Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as apps on mobile platforms, minimizing development costs and effort.
2. Innovative user interface If your application requires an innovative user interface, including animation, complex custom drawing, or unique interaction methods, Flutter provides powerful tools and libraries to help you achieve these goals.
3. Desktop supplement for cross-platform mobile applications. If you have already developed a cross-platform mobile application using Flutter, you can easily implement the desktop version by using Flutter to develop desktop applications without having to relearn other desktop development frameworks.
4. Prototyping and rapid development Flutter’s hot reload feature makes it an ideal tool for prototyping and rapid development. You can view changes to your application in real time, iterate and optimize quickly.
Technology comparison: Flutter vs. traditional desktop application development framework
To understand Flutter’s advantages in desktop app development more clearly, let’s compare it with traditional desktop app development frameworks.
1. Cross-platform Flutter:
Supports Windows, macOS and Linux. Build multiple platforms using the same code base. Reduce development and maintenance costs. Traditional desktop development framework:
Different development tools and languages need to be used respectively. Increased development costs and workload.
2. User interface aesthetics Flutter:
Provides rich UI components and custom drawing capabilities. Beautiful and highly customized user interfaces can be created. Traditional desktop development framework:
Depending on the framework and tools used, more effort may be required to achieve the same aesthetics.
3. Performance Flutter:
Use a high-performance rendering engine (Skia). Enable smooth animations and fast user interface responsiveness. Traditional desktop development framework:
Performance depends on the framework and programming language chosen and may not be as efficient as Flutter.
4. Fast iteration and hot reloading Flutter:
Provides hot reload functionality to quickly preview and debug application changes. Shorten the development cycle and increase development efficiency. Traditional desktop development framework:
Most traditional desktop development frameworks do not support hot reloading, and the development process may be cumbersome.
5. Community support and plugin ecosystem Flutter:
- Has an active community and rich plugin ecosystem.
- Find solutions and third-party plugins easily.
Traditional desktop development framework:
- Community support and plugin ecosystem may not be as rich as Flutter.
How to start developing desktop applications with Flutter
Now, let’s learn how to start developing desktop applications using Flutter. Here are some basic steps:
Install Flutter If you have not installed Flutter, you can visit Flutter's official website (https://flutter.dev/) for installation instructions. After the installation is complete, make sure you have set Flutter's environment variables.
Create a Flutter desktop application project Using Flutter's command line tool, you can create a new Flutter desktop application project. The command is as follows:
flutter create my_desktop_app
This will create a new project named my_desktop_app in your working directory.
Writing application code In the project directory, you can edit the lib/main.dart file, which is the entry file for the Flutter desktop application. You can use Dart to write code to build user interfaces and application logic.
Run the App Use the following command to run your Flutter desktop app:
flutter run
This command will launch the application and display it on the desktop.
Building and Publishing the App Once you have finished developing your app, you can use Flutter's commands to build an executable file for publishing to different desktop platforms. The specific build commands will vary depending on your target platform. For example, to build a Windows executable, use the following command:
flutter build windows
Once the build is complete, you will have a standalone executable file that can be run on the target operating system.
In addition to the currently more mainstream Flutter framework, I would also like to share with you a recently discovered domestic cross-end framework - FinClip .
FinClip is a small program container technology, which can also be said to be a small program sandbox Runtime/Engine. It provides a runtime based on the browser kernel, using dynamic language (JS) and declarative View construction (XML). It is compatible with the mainstream Internet small program technology and can be used DSL framework based on Vue and react.
The reason why FinClip is introduced in the platform desktop application development framework is that in addition to supporting mobile cross-terminal development capabilities, FinClip also supports running small programs on platforms other than mobile phones, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Tongxin, Kirin and other platforms. This means Now, mobile terminals, PC terminals, IOT and other smart terminals can run small programs. At the same time, it also provides a complete backend management system to uniformly manage the listing and removal of mini programs and monitor the usage details of mini programs. In other words, with the help of this tool, you can quickly introduce business by leveraging the maturity of the WeChat mini program ecosystem. Ecosystem to strengthen and enrich your business scenarios, and achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase in both technology and business.
This small program container technology also brings many benefits by separating the view layer and the logic layer:
1. Facilitate data sharing and interaction between multiple mini program pages. Having the same context throughout the applet's lifecycle provides a familiar coding experience for developers with a background in native application development;
2. The separation and parallel implementation of Service and View can prevent JS execution from affecting or slowing down page rendering, which helps improve rendering performance;
3. Because JS is executed in the Service layer, the DOM operated in JS will not affect the View layer, so the mini program cannot operate the DOM structure, which also makes the performance of the mini program better than the traditional H5.