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Hello, Flutter! – Development & Logging In

Hello, Flutter!

Flutter 'Hello World' app
Flutter ‘Hello World’ app

I have been toying with Flutter for the past 2 months now and here is my take on it.

Being an essential part of my internship during me final semester at Mesa College I was assigned to learn the framework. At first it was intimidating to create mock-ups for a mobile application we were working on.

After reviewing other candidates (namely React Native and Ionos) we selected Flutter. The cross-platform compatibility and edge in customization which would future-proof any development changes in the future.

The Development

Demo Flutter App
First demo UI

The overall installation process was pretty painless, I followed the main Flutter documentation here. Once I launched my first project, a demo UI application,  I began to feel that sense of being overwhelmed. After looking at a foreign syntax and the array of new file types I never heard of (Am I late to the yaml party ?) I started to get confused.

My fears quelled however once after toying around the environment for a few hours something in my head clicked; “It’s just like if JavaScript and CSS had a baby!”. Something like that. Secondly, I will say it did take me a minute to get the hand of the tree structure and nesting of widgets. However a few tweaks of VSCode settings seemed to do the trick in seeing how clean my syntax was. Finally, things were looking up!

Logging In

Flutter application demo
Flutter login demo

As of now I am able to produce this login screen from a wire frame mock-up given to me. I must say it’s about 90% there. I am working on more readable text and need to integrate the keyboard input. Google Firebase authorization for actually logging in the application is another task here, but I am content with the development so far. 

 

Hello, Flutter!