Flutter for Web: Is it the Right Choice for Your Web-App Development?

Web apps are transforming the way businesses deliver their services to clients. Tailored Web apps offer an excellent opportunity for Businesses to connect & engage users in a much more efficient way. There are numerous platforms accessible for developing such an appealing Web App. Flutter for Web is the latest addition to the arsenal of web-app developers.

Initially launched by Google, Flutter is its UI library that's being used to create cross-platform mobile apps. Although launched with Mobile apps in focus, mobile app development services can now use Flutter to create super-attractive & highly efficient Web-apps.

This post will go over Flutter, how it benefits businesses and what factors you should think about before deciding on Flutter.

Let's start with the fundamentals.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is a free-source Ui library designed by Google. It is used to create top-of-the-line native apps across multiple platforms like iOs, Android & Windows. It can be used to create Mobile, Desktop & Web apps by using a single codebase, making it one of the most versatile UI libraries.

Fusing its Dart Programming, Cupertino & Material Designing helps developers build powerful apps with highly intuitive & engaging User Interfaces. What makes Flutter special is its native appearance. Almost every app designed by using Flutter performs flawlessly on any device.

What distinguishes Flutter for the Web?

Flutter for Web is the most versatile Web app development platform. It utilizes every pixel on the screen & creates HTML elements of its own. This technology gives complete control of the screen to the web developer.

The best part? You do not need any separate source code to create separate HTML elements as it uses standard-web-based technologies like JavaScript & HTML/CSS. Flutter for Web comes with two different rendering engines. Viz Dom Canvas & CanvasKit.

How does the performance of Flutter for Web compare?

The performance of any web-app development platform depends on two factors:

1. Its capacity to render & manipulate massive data

2. Multiple effects like Transition, Animation & a lot more

Flutter for Web makes a fantastic impression here. It can handle any large amount of data you throw at it. But the issue with Flutter for the Web is not the data; it's the second factor. During our hands-on testing, we discovered that Flutter can effortlessly churn through 90K to 120K data. The findings are also affected by the rendering engine used. Apps designed with powerful Canvas Kit rendering engines, for example, can handle payloads of up to 9 MB. This is over 400% more than the basic DomCanvas engine.

What Flutter can't manage are visual effects. They are not as good as those in advanced JavaScript frameworks. In short, Flutter delivers stunning performance while building any web app. But the only drawback here is Flutter cannot handle visual effects that effectively.

What Are the Advantages of Using Flutter for Commercial Web Development?

Several cross-platform frameworks have advantages over others. Unfortunately, you cannot get all the benefits while using a single platform until & unless you are using Flutter! Flutter offers all of the benefits across every platform, ensuring flexibility to the developers.

Let's have a look at the three most significant advantages of adopting Flutter for Business.

• Simultaneous Mobile and Web Development

When you are using Flutter, you can build Mobile & Web apps simultaneously! Although many cross-platforms offer the benefit of sharing the codebase between different target platforms. Flutter goes well beyond this fact. It lets you share the UI itself across multiple platforms.

Flutter is the way to go if you want to construct a web and mobile app at the same time. A team of Flutter developers may now create a whole product from a single codebase.

Designers must construct flexible user interfaces because the internet and mobile apps will run on a variety of screen resolutions and sizes. When the internet version of a screen must be completely different from the mobile one, Flutter can handle platform checks. It contributes to the rendering of various web and mobile interfaces.

It saves time since the web and mobile apps, among other things, share identical languages, styles, logic, and user interface components.

• Quick Development

We live in a world where people do not have time for anything. They want quick results. The same can be said for web app development. Every Business needs their application as fast as possible.

But web-app development takes a lot of time. Mobile app development companies must devote a significant amount of effort to refining the app visually and in terms of performance. Your traditional frameworks have a layout preview feature, but it is not that effective.

There comes the Flutter. Its "Hot Reload" feature is specifically designed to save time while testing the app. The developer can easily view all changes applied to the app almost instantly. This might not seem too much, but it can save days in practice!

Apart from this, Flutter comes with many ready-to-use widgets that make the development task even easier. Its large set of Material & Cupertino widgets mimic the behavior of each design language, ensuring the best results.

In short, you cut downtime required to complete various redundant processes with Flutter. This results in a quick app-development cycle.

• Performance at par with native apps

Ultimately it's the performance of apps that determine the app's success. In some cases, their performance & animation even looks better than native apps! And the Flutter-based apps deliver performance that is at par with the native apps.

The reason behind this improved efficacy is that the Flutter is directly built into machine code. So the chances of any performance bugs are outrightly eliminated. As a result, Flutter is the first choice of many developers and mobile app development services providers.

• Reuse Code from an Existing Mobile Application

Another major benefit of using Flutter is using the code & UI of an existing Mobile application. So if you have invested time & money in mobile app development via Flutter, it will save your resources while building the Web app.

Now let’s take a look at somePros & Cons of Flutter

Pros of Flutter Web

• Single codebase for multiple platforms like Mobile, Desktop & Web.

• Highly engaging & intuitive designs

• Extremely Adaptive layout

• Almost all widgets are supported by the web

• Reduces cost & time required to build a Web-app

Cons of Flutter Web

• Flutter is not too SEO-friendly

• As its new, its performance is not at par with other frameworks

• Debugging is not that efficient

What Considerations Should You Make When Using Flutter for the Web?

Before you start using Flutter, you must consider the following points

• You will have users from multiple platforms. Flutter is good only if you believe your users will be accessing your application from multiple platforms like Mobile, Tablets, Desktops & Web. If you think only a mobile app or a web app is enough to cater to your customers' needs, you should avoid Flutter.

• You have a mobile app built with Flutter. Flutter Web is useful only when you have an existing Flutter-based mobile app.

• Sharing the same content on cross-platforms. Flutter allows you to share Content & UI across multiple platforms. So if you think you can get better results by sharing the same content across multiple platforms, Flutter makes sense.

Conclusion:

Flutter is a good choice for developers looking to quickly create cross-platform applications. But as it is relatively new & has a smaller community, it has some limitations. However, because Google is behind it, you may expect it to become fully proof in the future years. It is recommended to weigh the pros & cons of Flutter & make the right choice.

Arjun Solanki is a Business Growth Strategist at a Leading Software Development Company. He has experience in developing and executing digital strategies for large global brands.