Book Image

Flutter for Beginners - Third Edition

By : Thomas Bailey, Alessandro Biessek
5 (2)
Book Image

Flutter for Beginners - Third Edition

5 (2)
By: Thomas Bailey, Alessandro Biessek

Overview of this book

There have been many attempts at creating frameworks that are truly cross-platform, but most struggle to create a native-like experience at high-performance levels. Flutter achieves this with an elegant design and a wealth of third-party plugins, solidifying its status as the future of mobile app development. If you are a mobile developer who wants to create rich and expressive native apps with the latest Google Flutter framework, this book is for you. You’ll start with the basics of cross-platform development frameworks, specifically Flutter. You’ll then explore the Dart programming language which is the foundation of the Flutter framework. Next, you’ll get a feel for Flutter and how to create your first app, followed by an exploration of the various popular plugins that supplement the Flutter framework. Finally, you’ll explore testing and app release, including some common glitches that you may experience. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to create and release a basic Flutter app along with gaining a solid understanding of the Flutter framework and Dart language.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1:Learning the Core Concepts
6
Part 2:Building a Basic Flutter App
11
Part 3:Turning a Simple App into an Awesome App
15
Part 4:Testing and Releasing Your App

Where can I find plugins?

The Flutter community has a very easy way to find the plugins that you may need via the https://pub.dev site that they maintain. This is where all plugins are registered and the primary way that developers find plugins.

This site not only allows you to search for plugins but also includes useful sections such as the following:

  • Flutter favorites: Plugins that demonstrate the highest levels of quality.
  • Most popular packages: The most downloaded plugins.
  • Package of the week: This is a series of animated videos that introduce some of the plugins available. Flutter has been very successful in the use of short videos to introduce the widget of the week and has rolled out the concept of package of the week.

Now, let’s take a look at the individual entries for a plugin at pub.dev.

Plugin entry

One of my favorite plugins is the one that introduces a new widget – the AutoSizeText widget. Just like its name suggests, this...