Looking at the Flutter 2.8 release note, it seems like a Christmas gift from Google to the Flutter users before two weeks. It is the final stable release of the year and 2424 PRs merged with closing 2976 issues.
All this would have happened because of the progressively growing Flutter community. There are 207 contributors and 178 devotional reviewers behind the announcement of Flutter 2.8.
In all aspects of Flutter cross-platform development, their hard work has paid off in terms of crucial performance, improvements, and a bunch of new features.
A Flutter App Development Company continuously works on the platform. So, the hearts and minds of the developers go Flutter in excitement whenever improvements and new features roll out.
Get a complete insight into Flutter 2.8 features to decide on your project.
Top Improvements and Features of Flutter 2.8 Update
Startup Latency is reduced by 50%!!
The significant improvement is the Flutter developers have brought improved startup latency. Against a large and famous Google app with over 1 million code lines - Google Play, they have tested these improvements.
Mr. Chris Sells, the Google Product Manager, said on the Flutter development experience that the app achieved a 50% reduction while running on a low-end Android device and 10% improvement on high-end devices.
So now the Flutter apps will start faster, be more performant using less memory than before.
New feature and support in Flutter DevTools
Many a time, - it happens that the problem with non-performant applications is not the widgets build but layouts or paints. They have added a new feature called Enhance Tracing to resolve this debugging issue.
It will make it easy to see UI jank in the timeline and fix them by enabling track widgets, track layouts, and track paint. To profile the startup performance of the application Flutter 2.8 release has brought new support.
It is a significant update as to when the app takes so much time or janks at startup it looks not well for new users.
Improvements in Web Platform Views
It is good news for those who use the Flutter with platform views for the web. For earlier platform views, the Flutter 2.8 reuses already created canvases, unlike previous versions.
It will help to have multiple Html Element View instances and reduce scrolling jank in the web apps when using them. And the best part is there is no need to compromise the performance.
WebView 3.0
Coupled with some handy features, the developers get the webview_flutter plugin version 3.0 With Flutter 2.8.
The features are:
- For populating content, it supports POST as well as GET
- Loading HTML from files and strings
- Transparent background support
- Writing cookies before loading content
So, with these features, there is no need to create a separate version of the application if the developers have Terms of Services documents in HTML and want to show them to the users.
Moreover, to provide support for the web, they have provided webview_flutter to answer - What does hosting a WebView look like in a Flutter web app?
General Availability Of Flutter Ads
As the new stable supports google ads of five different formats, it becomes easier to monetize the mobile apps built with Flutter. Some examples are banner, interstitial, native ads, rewarded video.
Furthermore, to help optimize ad performance, the Google Mobile Ads SDK for Flutter also lets the developer integrate with AdMob and Ad Manager Support.
Firebase and FlutterFire
For FlutterFire users - there are a couple of updates associated with this release. With Flutter and Firebase the features intended to simplify application development:
- From beta to stable, all FlutterFire plugins are graduating
- For several Firebase services, new support in DartPad
- For authentication and live Firestore queries, up-to-date libraries to more easily build UI
- For Flutter new Firestore available in Alpha for Object /Document Mapping
The ascension of all FlutterFire plugins from beta to stable is another significant update.
Major plugins such as Analytics, Dynamic Links, Performance Monitoring, Realtime Database, In-App Messaging, Remote Config, the new kid on the block, and Installations move to stable and ready for production use for iOS, Android, and web.
It provides new support in DartPad for many Firebase Services on the cord of Firebase like live Firestore query UI.
It provides new libraries for authentication and for Flutter a new alpha version of Firestore Object/Document Mapping.
Desktop Support Now One More Step Up
Flutter 2.8 release has leapt forward to improve areas such as internationalization and localization support on the road to the stable release for desktop app development.
Furthermore, it provides improved support for visual density, Windows accessibility integration, and more.
Dart 2.15 With Cool New Features
The Flutter 2.8 release has not come alone but brought new features. Its programming language brings Dart 2.15 with some performance boost.
For example:
- On concurrency, significant performance improvements
- While developing Flutter UI Dart has constructor tear-offs now that will come in handy
- For compressed pointers, support added that results in memory reduction
- Dart SDK now has performance tools and DevTools suits of debugging
New pub features include:
- A security feature for package publishers, detecting if accidentally a publisher publishes secrets
- To support retracting a package version is another feature
You can get an insight into the report on Dart 2.15 new features and improvements.
So Much More Is Yet To Come
Flutter has got a whole new branch coming out, i.e., Flame 1.0, a modular 2D game engine built with Flutter while making the last release of the year remarkable.
Open-source Flutter itself is more performant. All improvements and cutting-edge features make it more appealing coming out with releases.
There are lots and lots of reasons to upgrade to Flutter 2.8 after this release note.
Business people must hurry to get flutter app development services as with every release - their demand touches an all-time high.
