Google, on August 5, 2020, has just launched the latest version of Flutter 1.20 Stable. In this latest version of Flutter, Google has focused more on UI improvements, updated visual studio code extension, and autofill for mobile text fields, etc.
The latest released version of Flutter 1.20 creates history with the topmost number of contributors till date. It incorporates almost 5485 closed problems and 3029 combined PRs from 359 contributors from all over the world. As per Google, there are now over 90,000 apps developed with Flutter on Google Play. This number was 50,000 back in April 2020.
Let’s have a look at the new features and updates this new version of flutter 1.20 has to offer to Flutter app developers!
What’s New in Flutter 1.20? All Updates & Features
Performance Enhancements
Google made some essential performance enhancements in its latest released version of Flutter. These are:
- Google’s Flutter 1.20 is more improved with a performance fix for tree-shake-icons. These icons remain by default when you build non-web apps and reduce the size of your app by removing any icons that are not used. This feature is presently restricted to the TrueType fonts.
- Poor animation can adversely affect your overall app. It appears negatively in the first run because of a shady compilation jank. The new Flutter has Skia Shading Language Shader Warm-up that lowers the shader compilation jank by almost 2 times.
- Google’s Flutter now has enhanced mouse hit testing’s performance in the web-based micro-benchmarks which is upto 15 times. As a result, Google has been able to add support for mouse cursors which will appear in various commonly used widgets.
- Google has improved the decoding time and speed of Dart’s UTF-8 Decoder. The organization has established measurable enhancements of nearly 400% for the Chinese text and 200% for English on the low-end ARM gadgets in the UTF-8 decoding benchmarks.
Autofill for Mobile Text Fields
This is the most requested and preferred feature in the latest release version of Flutter. Google has come up with the support for the text autofill. This feature is highly preferred for developers worldwide.
Bringing Dart DevTools in Visual Studio Code
Flutter 1.20 also includes the new Visual Studio Code extension. This brings Dart DevTools into the visual studio code extension in flutter 1.20. Developers can enable this using the dart.previewEmbeddedDevTools setting.
InteractiveViewer- New Widgets Introduced
The all-new interactive widget is introduced in the version Flutter 1.20. This widget helps developers to build, design and apply interactive elements on your app like Drag n Drop, Pan, Zoom, and etc.
Updated DatePicker, TimePicker, RangeSlider, and Material Slider
In addition to new widgets, this release includes a number of updated widgets to match the latest Material guidelines. These include Slider and RangeSlider. DatePicker has received an update with all-new compact design and assistance for date ranges. TimePicker has also got a new style.
Updating Import Statements on File Rename
The Visual Studio Code has a new feature- updating imports on rename. This feature updates the import statements automatically when files are renamed or removed.
Currently, the feature just works for single files. Support for multiple files or folders will be announced soon.
An Updated Network Page
The most recent version of Dart DevTools has come with an upgraded version of the Network page that allows web socket profiling.
Tooling Metadata for all Tool Builders
This is another update for developers doing flutter tooling. This tooling metadata for the flutter framework provides a mapping of flutter framework color names to color values, for both Cupertino and Material color sets.
Other important updates/changes
Flutter 1.20 has lots of other new features and developer tools. Just to name a few:
- a new responsive licenses page available from the AboutDialog
- a new pubspec.yaml format requirement for publishing
- an updated Flutter plugins
- an updated Network page in Dart DevTools with support for web socket profiling
- support for automatically updating import statements when files are moved or renamed in Visual Studio Code; and more.
Conclusion
With this biggest launch of the year, Google promises to come with more in the future. With every release, Google ensures Flutter is fast, beautiful and more productive.
Build more beautiful, feature-rich & performance oriented Flutter apps for your business integrating these latest features of this newly released Flutter version!
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About Author:
Rashmi Kanti is a passionate content writer & a blogger having written numerous blogs for IT domain. Being into the Blogging world for the past 4 years, she is presently contributing technology loaded articles & blogs regularly to QSS Technosoft. Rashmi has a proficient knowledge of the latest market trends in the mobile & web applications and expresses herself a big technology geek.