Flutter for Web Apps: Everything You Should Know About the Stable Version

Despite the growing mobility and an extensive range of solutions offered by native apps, web apps are still popular and robust. Many people research their top brands on mobile, but when it comes to transactions, they prefer the web application.

The advent of progressive web apps saw more businesses creating web solutions and mobile apps. According to a study, PWAs have a 36% higher conversion rate than native applications. While people spend long hours on mobile, they trust desktops for security and experience.

Most mobile apps fail to convert owing to the poor user experience, apps not optimized for the different devices, and the inability to view the product specifications properly.

The ease of scaling, the holistic control, and the flexibility that a web app offers is the main reason why more businesses are opting for the platform-agnostic, browser-compatible solution.

The Growing Need for Web Apps

It's clear that web apps, especially the trend Progressive Web App, are gaining popularity. However, we still need to know why a business should opt for a web application, despite having built more convenience and visibility with a mobile solution.

• Optimized for Speed: When your user opens your application, the last thing they want to do is wait. With PWAs specifically, you can reduce the wait time significantly. They are developed to provide incredible speed for the customers, which in turn can enhance your visits and engagement.
• No Bandwidth Usage: One of the main reasons users may switch to a web app is the low bandwidth being used. Not everyone has enough space to download all the apps. However, they may want to use them regularly. These web apps allow you to use the applications without downloading them.
• Easy to Maintain: Yes, this is the best part about having a web app as against a mobile application. You can easily maintain them and manage the upgrade. A web app can operate across devices and specifications. It would help if you kept your browser updated and compatible.
• Developer Friendly: Knowledge of the best tools, primary languages, and simple setups can help you get a user-friendly and highly usable web app.

By incorporating the latest trends and technologies, you can heighten the experience while keeping pace with user experience.

However, choosing a suitable technology to build your web application is essential. Flutter for web has been offering several enhancements and opportunities to the web app developer with its fully-developed infrastructure.

With this framework, you can get all the tools and resources needed to push out a capable web application. If you are not sure whether to go with the flutter for mobile and web app or not, here are some pointers that can help.

What is Flutter for Web?

This is the web application development framework developed by Flutter so that businesses can reach more audiences with platform-agnostic solutions. You can create PWAs with this tool, prototype your application and develop it using a single codebase. Apart from PWAs, this tool also supports single-page applications.

The stable version of Flutter for web was introduced with Flutter version 2.0. However, the web app development framework received some exciting enhancements and capabilities with the 3.0 version. Here are some of the things that occurred with Flutter 3.0.

What's new in Flutter 3.0 for Web App?

While version Flutter 3.0 has listed out excellent functionality for mobile app development in India, what catches the eye is the exciting mix they have introduced flutter for web app.

• Enhanced Image Decoding: The new web app framework has come with new APIs that can help disentangle the pictures from the fundamental string. As a result, the decoding occurs at 2x speed. This happens without disrupting the original string and ensuring no junk code stays.
• App Lifecycles: The new version has a specific web app lifecycle API. As a result, it improves bootstrapping efforts. You can even introduce headless mode to your web application. As a result, developing a splash screen and loading indicator speeds up.

General Enhancements

• New Dart Version: The new version of Dart 2.17 is said to enhance web and mobile app development. There are super constructors and enhanced enumerations that have been introduced with flutter for mobile and web versions.
• Performance Enhancements: They have enhanced the mistiness movement execution to improve overall app performance. The new enhancements have improved the delivery and reduced memory utilized substantially.
• DevTools: When you are equipped with a reliable framework, you look for useful tools to enhance your capabilities. The network tab has received some improvement. There is a dedicated plugin for the provider, which allows you to track the notifier.

With the apt flutter app development services in India, you can leverage these enhancements and improve the web app experience.

Flutter for Web: How it Works?

Is flutter ready for the web? The Flutter web framework works with two different rendering engines- HTML and CanvasKit. Developers can use either engine to render website apps the same way they would render mobile apps. For this purpose, the Flutter web framework first converts the project into a native app code before deploying it. At this point, you will see a single index.html file for the whole project.

The browser script that you use will be JavaScript or C++. You can also use WebAssembly and WebGL as part of this framework to build single or multi-page web apps.

Hire Flutter Developer to Check Web App Performance

It isn't enough to develop a web application; you need to create high-performing solutions actively. To measure the app's performance, you need to render massive data. Secondly, you need to check how the transitions, effects, and animations can impact your business app. for this, you can use DomCanvas or CanvasKit engines.

The rendering engine converts the code you have written in Dart to CSS or HTML

This will help execute the widgets and check for performance

Note: Owing to the limitations of each engine (DomCanvas comes with lesser payload and CanvasKit needs significant changes to calculate performance), it becomes difficult to measure the speed and performance. You might increase the wait time when improving performance.

However, if you believe you don’t have the expertise or bandwidth to build or check the performance of your flutter apps, connect to hire Flutter developer.

Pros and Cons of Flutter for Web App Development Services in India

Before diving into the pros and cons of using Flutter for web, you should use this framework only if you plan a flutter for mobile and web app development for your business. It would be fit if you were going to use Flutter for both solutions. In this case, the development processes improve significantly, and you can deploy the apps faster.
If you already have a mobile app, you can reuse the code developed for the solution to develop your web application. You don't need to rework logic, UI elements, or layouts when you have used Flutter for mobile. As the web version is simpler and easier to develop than mobile apps, you can reuse these components and enhance developer productivity.

Pros of Flutter for Web App Development Services in India

• It can handle massive amounts of data, making it easier for you to deliver a heavy and high-performing web solution.
• It can quickly render graphical effects, animations, and transitions without impacting the performance.
• The supporting libraries are extensive, so you can build custom applications and improve their usability.
• You can run your JS code within the Flutter framework, thus reducing your development and coding time.
• Supports the development of PWAs.
• If you have a web app for your business and wish to integrate the new app with it, Flutter web extends the necessary support.

Cons of Flutter for Web App Development Services in India

• The rendering engines are not very powerful, as the load size is more significant than other web app development frameworks. This can impact user experience or speed.
• You cannot make changes to the existing HTML or Java code.
• It is not optimized for search engines. So, it would help if you integrated third-party tools to optimize your web app.

Pre-Requisites for Creating your First Web App with Flutter

If you are planning a Flutter web app, here are some things (read software and system) you will need to get started.

• The software development kit for the Flutter framework.
• A chrome browser to help with debugging the web app.
• IDE to support the Flutter web app. You can choose from Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, or IntelliJ IDEA. Install the Flutter and Dart plugins to get started with the requisite tools and resources.

How to Build your First Flutter Web App?

Here's a step-by-step guide to building your first-ever Flutter web app

1. Start with the setup: You need to set up the Flutter webview. Here are the commands that can help

• Flutter channel 
• Upgrade
• Flutter config-enable-web

When you install the Flutter web enables, you will notice that a chrome device will open the browser where your app will run, and the server will provide the necessary URL

2. During the setup, you also need to initiate the web server, connect the Flutter devices and enable Flutter tools. Once done, restart your IDE. This will show you the chrome browser and web server in the device pulldown.

3. You have set up the testing modules and other aspects of developing and testing the project. Let's create the project. This is similar to creating a mobile application with Flutter. When you create a new project, it will automatically generate the application's web and mobile (iOS and Android) versions.

4. Once the app is created, you need to compile and run the application. Select the web app from the dropdown. Run the command as stated below to

1. To render the app from the command line, here is the command.
   • Flutter create my-app
   • cd myapp
2. If you want to render from the localhost.
3. Flutter run –d chrome. With this, the launch command is given using the development compiler within the Chrome browser.
4. It is time to release the build. For the release build, you need to use the dart2js instead of the development compiler so that it can run the JavaScript file. Once this is done, you can create a release build using the release mode or Flutter build. It will be added to the build directory, where everything is maintained.

Hire Flutter Web App Developer in India

It is impossible to ignore the growing need for web and mobile app development in India. A classic presence on both platforms can guarantee you reach and visibility goals. However, to match the user expectations and align the apps to your business goals, you must deliver a seamless and high-performance web app that can be scaled to growing demands.

Developing a Flutter solution can be overwhelming if you don't have the right technical knowledge or experts on your team. It is essential to partner with a suitable development partner with the necessary infrastructure, knowledge, and expertise to translate your web app needs.

Expert App Devs have delivered numerous successful projects for Flutter. We have also devised winning solutions with Flutter for the web recently. Our flexible engagement models and affordable pricing makes us stand out amidst competitors.

Jignen Pandya

Vice President at Expert App Devs

Responsible for creating a sales funnel, attracting top-of-the-funnel customers, and converting the target market.