Welcome to my February Flutter newsletter!
What a month it's been! With Flutter 3.19 out now and all the community articles and videos, there’s much to explore.
Plus, I’m thrilled to unveil my new course platform and tell you more about it.
As ever, I’m here to deliver the freshest Flutter news and updates!
Let’s dive in! 🔥
Flutter 3.19 is here
Who doesn't love a seamless update? With Flutter 3.19, there are no breaking changes, and we get a bunch of performance improvements for free!
Here's what's new in the latest version:
- Framework scrolling improvements
- Improved fidelity and bug fixes on a bunch of widgets
- Impeller progress on Android
- DevTools updates
Missed the official word? Get all the details here:
📝 New in Dart 3.3: Extension Types, JavaScript Interop, and More
As usual, Flutter & Dart go hand in hand. And the new Dart 3.3 release introduces a new extension types feature.
But what is it?
Extension types are similar to extension methods, but they hide away the interface of the underlying type.
This makes them quite useful for interoperability with host platforms, and the official announcement covers all the details:
📝 2024 Roadmap
Every year, the Flutter team shares a high-level roadmap of their priorities and plans.
Highlights for this year include:
- More work on Impeller (iOS & Android)
- Improved interop with Android and iOS (useful for hybrid apps)
- Wasm support on Flutter web and SEO exploration
- Progress on Dart macros
Learn more here:
📝 Harness the Gemini API in your Dart and Flutter Apps
If you want to add AI to your Flutter apps, you’ll be pleased to know about the Google AI Dart SDK.
Read on to learn what you can build with the new SDK:
At the time of writing, the Google AI Dart SDK is not available in Europe and other regions. As an alternative, you can get an API key on the OpenAI platform and talk directly to the OpenAI REST API or use this unofficial package.
Official Videos by the Flutter Team
I like Flutter videos that are short and to the point. And this month, these were my two favourites. 👇
📹 feedback (Package of the Week)
Crafting an app that truly resonates with users means listening to their feedback. The feedback package is your go-to tool for collecting user insights with ease.
It lets you integrate a feedback panel with text input and screenshot annotations.
To learn how to use it, customize it, and handle the generated feedback, watch this video:
📹 Patterns | Decoding Flutter
Pattern matching and destructuring have been available since Dart 3.0 (released last August). But if you’ve never used a language that supports patterns, the new syntax can be pretty confusing.
In this video, Craig Labenz explains what patterns are, shows some examples, and covers the powerful things you can do with them:
I also recommend this article, featuring a long list of use cases:
Curated Picks: Articles, Videos, and Tools
This month, I curated a nice collection of high-quality articles and videos. 👇
📝 A PocketBase backend for Flutter and Dart
Not long ago, I tinkered with PocketBase, an open-source BaaS that offers authentication, a remote SQLite database with real-time updates, file storage, and super easy deployment.
Back then, I was quite impressed but never got around to writing an article about it.
So I was happy to discover this tutorial, guiding you through all the steps for building a Flutter app with PocketBase:
📝 Create a Figma Clone app with Flutter and Supabase Realtime
Interactive, real-time applications are the future of collaboration, and I'm a big fan of Supabase – I even used it for my course platform. So, it's no surprise this tutorial caught my eye.
Learn how to create a (simplified) Figma clone using the magic of Supabase Realtime Broadcast and Flutter's CustomPainter:
📹 Flutter Web Hosting With Github Pages & Custom Domain
Whether you're showcasing your work to stakeholders or sidestepping the App Store's red tape, Flutter web is your go-to.
But unless you want to play a prank and send your friends to localhost:62699, you'll need to deploy your app somewhere. 😅
In this video tutorial, Dave Faliskie shows us how to deploy a Flutter web app for free on GitHub pages with a single command:
📝 Building High-Quality Production Flutter App: A Complete Guide to Flutter Remote Logging with GCP Cloud Logging
Remote logging is crucial if you want to monitor your Flutter apps in production. And while popular crash reporting tools like Firebase Crashlytics can help, they have limitations.
Take your diagnostic skills to new heights and get insights about your app’s behaviour in production with this step-by-step guide:
📝 Extreme UI Adaptability in Flutter — How Google Earth supports every use case on earth
The Google Earth team recently embarked on a project to rewrite their mobile and web clients with Flutter.
Their goal was to unify their codebase and create a fully adaptive UI to deliver the best possible experience on each target platform.
And in this detailed article, Craig Labenz tells their story, which is full of valuable insights:
🧱 Flutter Mix
Lately, there have been many discussions about Flutter’s verbosity when it comes to building UIs.
While web developers have enjoyed custom UI kits such as Radix UI and shacdn, Flutter devs have been limited to the Material and Cupertino widgets for some time.
Enter Flutter Mix: a new package offering expressive building blocks for building design systems in Flutter.
When compared to the usual Flutter styling code, Mix offers a more streamlined syntax, and while it is still in beta, it seems promising:
Remember that if you adopt Flutter Mix or similar packages, your UI code will depend on them and it’s hard to make long-term bets about their future.
Latest from Code with Andrea
In the past month, I've published a new article and launched Code With Andrea Pro, my new course platform. 👇
📝 We Need To Talk About FlutterFlow
FlutterFlow is a popular low-code tool for building Flutter apps visually.
Its main features include a drag & drop UI, integration with external APIs and backends like Firebase and Supabase, configurable themes, built-in UI templates, and much more.
After taking it for a ride, I decided to share this article where I share my experience and discuss its limitations so you can make a well-informed decision:
🔥 Code with Andrea Pro
The launch of Code With Andrea Pro marks a new chapter: the platform contains all my existing video courses and offers a much better experience than Teachable.
For newcomers, I prepared a free "Flutter Starter Pack", an introduction to the most important Flutter topics, tools, and packages:
I'm also offering the first module of my Flutter Foundations course for FREE - for this week ONLY.
This should give you a good idea of my teaching style:
To mark the occasion, there’s a 33% discount on all my individual courses. If this is of interest, you can buy them here:
All the courses are also available as a bundle, which usually sells for $299. But just for this week, you can get it for $219:
Note: this is a time-limited offer valid until February 26th, 2024.
My plans include new features, new courses, and different "learning modes"; you’ll hear all about them in the coming weeks and months.
But for now, I hope you'll enjoy the new platform. ✨
Until Next Time
Creating Code With Andrea Pro has been a 15-month journey and my most ambitious project to date.
Curious about the tech stack I used, the challenges I faced, and insights on launching a project like this? My next article drops tomorrow with all the details.
Thanks for your support, and happy coding!
