Flutter's Latest Improvements and What You Need to Know!

Flutter is a rapidly evolving open-source mobile app development framework that has gained a lot of popularity among developers in recent years. It was introduced by Google in 2017 and has since grown to become one of the most popular mobile app development frameworks in the world. Flutter's success can be attributed to its ability to create high-quality, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Flutter's hot reload feature allows developers to see changes in their code instantly, making it easy to build and iterate on apps quickly.

Since its inception, Flutter has undergone several updates and improvements, each bringing new features and functionalities to the framework. In 2023, Flutter is set to continue its growth and evolution, with even more updates and improvements in the pipeline. In this blog, we'll take a look at some of the latest improvements and updates in Flutter, and explore how they are making mobile app development even easier and more efficient. We'll also examine the future of Flutter and how it is shaping the landscape of mobile app development in 2023 and beyond.

Here is the list of crucial Flutter PR updates the month of March:

1. Wasm Compile is now available in Master Channel for Flutter Web.

   This PR was Committed by Kevin Moore & merged on 3rd March. [ 1. ]
   
   

2. Selectable Regions' context Menu Builder fixed for the web.

   PR Committed By Justin McCandless & merged on 2nd March. [ 2. ]
   
   

3. Now you will get a useful message when you print ‘toString()’ in release or debug mode with an ErrorDescription.

   PR Committed By Daniel Austin & merged on 1st March. [ 3. ]
   
   

4. Week Day in CupertinoDatePicker with date mode is now available.

   PR Committed by Skandar Munir & merged on 28th Feb [ 4. ]

5. Text color for CupertinoThemeData.brightness would not be null from now

   This PR was committed by Ivirtex & merged on 28th Feb. [ 5. ]

6. Flutter Config will now give errors on too many arguments.

   This PR was committed by Grerg Price & merged on 28th of Feb. [ 6. ]
   
   

7. During Flutter run, if you add ‘-d web-server’ it will serve a web app in any browser while keeping the connection intact.

   This PR is committed by Christopher Fujino & merged on 27th February. [ 7. ]

   
   

8. On Desktops, DropDownMenu will have a ‘click’ mouse cursor in place of an ‘edit’ mouse cursor one.

   This PR is committed by Quen Cheng & merged on 28th February. [ 8. ]
   This PR is to add a small change on the mouse cursor of the DropdownMenu. On desktop platforms, when the requestFocusOnTap is set to false, the mouse cursor should become SystemMouseCursors.click to indicate this field is clickable, instead of editable.

   
   

9. Listview scroll animation performance improvement for Android. this PR was committed by Greg Price and merged on 4th March

   "Make ClampingScrollSimulation ballistic and more like Android". [ 9. ]

   
   

10. LayoutBuilder will now have better suggestions for parameter’s options. this PR committed by James Lee & merged on 4th March.

    "Add typically used parameter names to the builder used in layout_builder". [ 10. ]

    
    

11. Undo/redo in EditText has a fix where it adds a new entry to the history. This PR was committed by Bruno Leroux & merged on 4th March.

    "Fix text history undo/redo should not add a new entry to the history". [ 11. ]

    
    

12. Add custom context menus in SelectableRegion on the web. This PR was committed by Justin McCandless & merged on 1st March.

    "Custom context menus in SelectableRegion on web". [ 12. ]

    
    

13. EditableText selection has UI improvements for selection handles. This PR was committed by takashi kasai & merged on 3rd March.

    "moving the left handle automatically scrolls EditableText to the right handle, which doesn't happen on native". [ 13. ]

    
    

14. Visual density for Menu will now work properly for negative values. This PR was committed by Qun Cheng & merged on 28th February.

    "Add visual density for menu default style". [ 14. ]

    
    

15. Now devices option in cmd will have the option to filter & check ‘is connected’ and ‘interface’. This PR committed by Victoria Ashworth & merged on 5th March.

    "Update device filtering and introduce isConnected and connectionInterface". [ 15. ]

    
    

16. Now IconBotton has three UI options to choose from. `IconButton.filled`, `IconButton.filledTonal` & `IconButton.outlined`. This PR was committed by Qun Cheng & merged on 5th March.

    "Add `IconButton.filled`, `IconButton.filledTonal`, `IconButton.outlined`". [ 16. ]

    
    

17. Added missing native-like shadow in Bottom Appbar and Bottom sheets this PR committed by Eilidh Southren & merged on 6th March.

    "Bottom appbar/sheet shadow property". [ 17. ]

    
    

18. Image Assets now will load faster. This PR was committed by Andrew Kolos & merged on 4th March.

    Speed up first asset load by using the binary-formatted asset manifest for image resolution". [ 18. ]

    
    

19. Added iOS build options with new vm services for devtool. This PR was committed by Chun-Heng Tai and merged on 6th March.

    "Adds vmservices for getting iOS build options". [ 19. ]