Google Launches Flutter SDK Beta in Push for Cross-Platform App Development

At the ongoing MWC 2018, Google has just announced Flutter beta 1, the search engine giant’s mobile UI framework and the first of its kind.

According to a new report from TechCrunch, the maker of the Android mobile operating software said it’s releasing the open-source Flutter into a wider beta test.

The purpose of Flutter is to give developers a faster way to create native mobile apps — in particular the user interfaces for the apps — which can take more time to create on individual iOS and Android app toolkits. Flutter lets developers build applications with platform-specific features and access core hardware features on Android and iOS.

Google is pitching Flutter for use with its Dart programming language, which it said is faster than the commonly used JavaScript and can compile source code for an app to native formats used in iOS and Android.

Flutter is an open-source technology, so it already has a package library. Google says there are already more than 1000 third-party modules for Flutter that developers can use right away with their apps, including things like Firebase, and GraphQL.

In addition to the third-party packages, Flutter comes pre-packed with some built-in widgets and components that will further speed up the development of apps.

With an entry into beta, Flutter is quickly becoming a big deal at Google. We’ll certainly hear more about it at Google I/O 2018, where there are already several talks scheduled to get developers up and running on the new SDK.

The first beta of Flutter is available here right now, and interested developers can also contribute to the development of the project on GitHub here.

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