Recently, there is no doubt that the hottest trend in the world of programming is none other than cross-platform development. And it is not surprising, since this approach brings in lots of significant benefits. The owners of products can expect that the use of multi-platform technologies will reduce costs of development and ensure faster time to market. App developers, in turn, can use the same business logic for mobile, web, and desktop versions of apps and consequently have quite less trouble with code maintenance.
According to the flutter app development company, developing a platform-independent app is surely a challenging task. So if you have decided to initiate such a project, you’ll certainly require a special and versatile framework. Fortunately, there are plenty of frameworks available out there. But recently, the Flutter framework is one of the most promising tools in the landscape of cross-platform technologies. In this blog, you’ll become familiar with the Flutter framework, review a range of ready-made UI components for this framework, & learn about upcoming commercial components of Flutter.
What is Flutter and Why it is so Popular
The Flutter framework is a relatively new declarative UI framework designed as well as maintained by Google to facilitate the implementation of cross-platform s/w solutions. Flutter was launched in 2018, it has already gained recognition & popularity among app developers and Flutter app development company. Responders of the popular app developer Survey 2020 held by Stack Overflow recognized Flutter as one of the most loved tools & technologies of the last year. A fresh survey on app developers from Statista names Flutter the most popular cross-platform framework utilized by software developers worldwide. Also, on GitHub, it has already reached the mark of 132K stars.
Why flutter technology is so popular among professional application developers?
Firstly, the Flutter framework enables you to build performant apps that feel natural on various platforms utilizing almost the same codebase. The Dart is a programming language used by Flutter and allows you to benefit from its numerous features. For example, the hot reload function makes it much easier to add new features to a Flutter project & test them without restarting the application. As per the Flutter app development company in India, the popularity of the Flutter framework continues to grow very fast thanks in large part to strong support from a very large community led by Google.
In the Flutter framework, everything revolves around widgets. Widgets play a key role in the Flutter hierarchy, serving as building blocks of all graphical objects in an application’s UI. The framework comes with 2 built-in sets of reusable widgets (Material Design & Cupertino) that can be customized to provide the desired UI & UX. If that’s not enough for your application, we’ve prepared a review of some interesting UI libraries as well as the components that can be useful in Flutter-based apps.
A glance at the list of Open-Source UI Libraries & Components for Flutter
Get Widget
Get Widget is probably one of the largest as well as well-known flutter UI libraries designed with the utilization of Flutter SDK. It comprises a huge collection (more than 1000) of reusable widgets intended for covering various cross-platform development requirements. With the help of GetWidget, you can easily create widely used UI elements such as tabs, lists, sliders, buttons, menus, and many others. As per the team of GetWidget, the library assists to cut the development time by 30–40 percent. Here is an open-source News app based on GetWidget & Flutter.
Flutter-Neumorphic
If you are going to hire flutter developers in India who follow web design trends, then you are surely familiar with the term neumorphism. It relates to the latest design approach that obtained quite extensive popularity in recent times. A neumorphic design implies extensive usage of shadows & gradients. Many hired flutter developers find it difficult to implement UI elements with this kind of design with the Flutter framework. If you are one of them, Flutter-Neumorphic is exactly what you must go for. This UI package will assist you to create neumorphic UIs in Flutter applications much faster.
PlutoGrid
A grid functionality is a crucial aspect of any app, especially if you are working on a data-intensive solution. You can consider PlutoGrid to make the implementation of this significant element easier in Flutter applications. This is a client-side UI grid component for creating standard data tables that render well across a number of platforms. Via the keyboard, it can be navigated. Utilizing this component, you can add a number of useful features to the table such as sorting & filtering, multiselection, frozen columns, cell renderer, grid as a popup, etc. Also, it is possible to enable a dark theme for the whole data table.
Staggered GridView
Staggered GridView is a very useful instrument for displaying images in a feed-like manner that isn’t typical for a standard GridView. This approach is utilized in popular social networks (Instagram) & photo hostings (Pinterest). Staggered GridView comes with multiple columns & rows of varying sizes, and many other helpful features letting you easily present groups of images with different height & width parameters.
Boxy
If your hired flutter developers ever utilized Flutter’s built-in layout widgets, then you must know that it has some limitations related to the implementation of flex & custom layouts. By using Boxy, you can overcome these difficulties. This tool is used for creating complex layouts with multiple children that assist to arrange the interface structure of your Flutter application. Boxy offers a set of utilities for layouts, dynamic widget inflation, slivers, & many other useful things.
TimelineTile
TimelineTile is a UI component that enables you to represent events or processes in chronological order via a timeline in the Flutter framework. Utilizing TimelineTile, you can build a vertical or horizontal timeline and complement it with additional items (such as icons, images, and text). This component gives you the freedom to customize any timeline element according to your requirements.
Charts Library
For any programmer, data visualization is a tricky task. Therefore it is great to have a good charting library in your arsenal. Charts is a charting library that surely deserves your attention. It is designed internally at Google, though it is not the organization’s official product. Written in Dart & based on Material Design, this library suits well for various data visualization purposes in Flutter applications. It supports an array of charts (line, time series, bar, pie, scatter plot, etc.) for visualizing complex data & making it more comprehensible for further analysis.
FL Chart
FL Chart is another charting option for the Flutter ecosystem that we would recommend for consideration, especially to your hired Flutter developers in India. It is a robust Flutter chart library utilized for creating popular charts. Currently, the list of available chart kinds includes the following: bar chart, scatter chart, pie chart, line chart, & radar chart.
Flutter FormBuilder
Flutter Form Builder is an intuitive tool designed to assist you in creating cross-platform forms, and thereby provide a reliable communication channel between users & a Flutter app. It comprises a range of input widgets encountered in standard forms: text field, range picker, checkbox, slider, date picker, etc. If required, this form maker also gives you an opportunity to produce custom input fields. Numerous built-in validators (mail, min, max, number, etc.) assist to make sure that users submit merely valid data. You can incorporate a blend of the number of validators & conditional validation (the validation of one field depends on the value entered in other specific fields).
TableCalendar
When you need assistance in arranging activities such as tasks, appointments, and meetings in a time sequence in Flutter projects, take a look at TableCalendar. This widget has a rich API permitting you to build multifunctional calendars with multiple view formats (week, 2 weeks, month) and customizable styling. Besides standard activities of one day, you can schedule custom events such as recurring ones. It also supports dynamic events & holidays. The localization feature will assist you to reach more potential users from different countries.
Flutter Map
Flutter Map is a map widget that brings the ability to visualize geographic data to your application. In fact, it is a Dart language implementation of a famous JS mapping library named Leaflet. With Flutter Map, you can create interactive maps and enrich them with various features (panning, zooming, markers, etc.). It also supports offline maps. A number of plugins allow extending the core feature set with additional functionalities.
Conclusion
Though there are a number of Flutter app development companies available in the market which we at ionicfirebase provide the best flutter mobile app development services without compromising the quality, as we have well-trained and well-experienced flutter app developer who has extensive knowledge in Dart Programming language. Being a leading flutter app development company we have delivered hundreds of apps that are doing really great in the Play store. Additionally, we have provided a number of readymade mobile app templates that can take your business to the next level. Also if you want some changes in our readymade apps to match your business requirement then we are here to help in every single step. Feel free to connect with our support team and arrange a call with our experienced app developers and hire flutter developers so that you get the best at an affordable price.