This week in Flutter #29: About web, community, and code samples — Q3 2021 survey results

The results from the latest quarterly Flutter survey are out. They mainly asked for opinions over Flutter for web. 38% of developers worked on a web app using Flutter in the month prior to the survey. That is way more than I expected.

And I do agree that “initial page load” is one of the worst experiences in Flutter web apps.

I am also surprised to see that 36% of developers think that SEO capabilities should be improved, completely missing that a Flutter web app should not be used as a marketing website 😑.

- Michele Volpato

Development 🧑‍💻

🔗 Flutter Databases: a look at the options from sqflite to ObjectBox

Which database is best for your app? That depends on how you are going to use it and what data you are going to store. Learn more about different databases available for your Flutter project in this article by Anna Ivahnenko.

🔗 Precache Images In Flutter

In this article by Shaiq khan, you’ll learn how to improve the user experience of your Flutter app by pre-caching the images that sometimes take too long to load, especially on web.

🔗 Flutter: Keyboard Shortcuts, the easy way!

I did not know it was so simple to implement keyboard shortcuts in a Flutter app. Read more in this article by Shawn Blais.

🔗 Read shared preferences from native apps

I have been thinking about the problem described in this article in the past. If you migrate your app from native to Flutter, you do want to keep the current state when a user downloads the update that migrates to Flutter. You do not want users to be logged out, or data saved in shared preferences to be lost. Marc Gerken describes how you can access the data saved in shared preferences by the native version of your app, from the Flutter version.

🔗 Flutter In-app education plugin

Interesting plugin from the team at Apparence.io. It gives you an easy way to teach your users about new features in the app, after an update.

🔗 Building my first Flutter app | Learning to fly 🎦

There is this new video series from the Flutter team, tailored to new developers starting with Flutter. In this first episode, Khanh Nguyen, a new addition to the Flutter team, explains the video series and asks what you want to see in the coming videos. So click the link and comment on the video with your expectations.

🔗 Indicate Website Loading for Flutter Web Apps 🤖

I can definitely use this article by Paras Jain. The initial loading time of the web apps I am working on does not make me happy at all.

Backend 🗄

🔗 Flutter Tutorial: How to use the Firebase Local Emulator with Cloud Functions

Are you learning how to integrate Firebase in your Flutter app? It is a good idea to use emulators while developing. It will save you time and money. Read how to use the Cloud Functions emulator while working on your Flutter app in this article by Andrea Bizzotto.

Others 🤷‍♂️

🔗 CachedNetworkImage (Package of the Week) 🎦

Aren’t you tired of downloading the same image over and over again? In this episode of Widget of the Week, you’ll learn how to cache an image in your Flutter app, so that you download it only once and it works every time.

That’s it for this week.

If you want to comment on any of this week’s entries, you can do it in the comment section below.

Have a bug-free week,

- Michele Volpato