Flutter 3.3 Update: What’s New & Good for Businesses & Developers?

Summary

About three months ago, Google I/O announced Flutter 3 with support for six operating systems. The update came with several new and exciting features like Casual games toolkit, foldable phone support, and more. Ever since then, Flutter merged about 5,687 pull requests on platforms like GitHub to release the latest Flutter 3.3 update.

The latest Flutter version rolled out on 30th August 2022 and came with a lot more upgrades and features to ease development and improve the performance of mobile applications. We will talk about all those latest features and updates that can benefit developers as well as businesses – one way or another.

So, without further ado, let’s get started!

Flutter 3.3: Major New Features

For your better understanding, we have divided the major updates based on the type it belongs to. Let’s dive right into it.

1. Framework upgrades

• Easier global selection

Benefits – smoother control, rich user experience.

• New changes to Material Design 3

If you have followed our previous blog on the Flutter 3 update, you would know that the support for Material Design 3 was finally complete with that release. But, Flutter’s latest version: 3.3.0 came with many exciting changes to Material Design 3.

Insider note – For those who don’t know what Material Design 3 is, it is a powerful theming engine for Android.

With special new features in the App bar, chip, material design protocol, & IconButton, developers can easily custom-create intuitive designs for your Flutter apps. You can easily check the list of all new updates in Github Material 3.

Benefits – more designing options for improved Flutter applications.

Chips –

• Scribble support

Thanks to Jami Couch, an active contributor to the Flutter community, Flutter 3.3 now supports scribbling. It’s fun, exciting, and hassle-free. Developers can now scribble on their iPad using widgets such as Editable text, TextField, and CupertinoTextField, as long as they are upgraded to Flutter 3.3.

• Improved rich text editing

Before the Flutter 3.3 release, there was an information gap as the ‘TextInputClient’ wasn’t efficient enough to reflect delta offset between the new and old editing state. However, the Flutter new version allows you to receive granular text updates from the plugin ‘TextInput’.

Building input field with desired style changes is possible with this Flutter version. You can check out the demo from here.

2. Performance upgrades

Improved image loading time – In the new Flutter 3.3 version, the image loading time is reduced significantly by reducing the number of copies and minimizing the dart garbage collection. Before this Flutter update was rolled out, the compressed data had to be copied several times so that the ‘ImageProvider’ API could load asset images successfully.

But, with the addition of the ‘ui.ImmutableBuffer.fromAsset’, the ‘ImageProvide’ pipeline changed significantly. Flutter developers can quickly decode the compressed data without requiring them to go through all the hassles of copying the compressed data.

3. Rendering layer upgrades

New graphic engine – The Flutter 3.3 has introduced a new graphic engine, named Impeller. This new rendering layer is expected to boost the performance of Flutter applications. If you are an avid Flutter follower, you would know that it used Skia Graphics Engine ever since its beta testing state.

While the graphics engine used till now is quite efficient in terms of its performance, the all-new Impeller is likely to further elevate the performance of hardware APIs such as Metal (for iOS), and Vulkan (for Android).

Moreover, it doesn’t need any run-time shader compilation which is a plus. Developers can build more sleek animation designs and better performance experiences with the graphic engine.

Benefits – improved API performance.

4. Desktop upgrades

Prior to the Flutter 3.3 upgrade, there were inconsistencies with the way Windows set their version as they used a particular Windows file to do so. However, this wasn’t the case with other operating systems and often created conflict, or pushing updates became impossible.

But, the latest Flutter upgrade ensures developers can change the project’s app version in Windows from the ‘pubspec.yaml’ file and build arguments only.

5. Package upgrades

One of the major highlights of the Flutter 3.0 release was its support for multiple operating systems. The latest 3.3 version release also extends the support to all six platforms. But, with more updates, there come complexities in navigation.

One such situation is addressed in the latest Flutter 3.3 version with the introduction of the ‘go_router’ package. Developers can now use the URL-based API to create simpler navigation option that includes deep links.

Benefits – seamless development, more feature integration.

Other Flutter 3.3 Upgrades

Change in VS Code extension

Reference to Wonderous UI app

The Wonderous app is created by the Gskinner team with help from the developers behind Flutter. It is one of the most engaging and illustrative works involving UI and graphics where a user/ spectator can explore the world’s wonders, art, and history.

It is a great reference to fellow developers and business units about what Flutter is capable of with the right UI and UX strategies. They can inspire and build similar engaging experiences for the audience.

Improved DevTools

With the new Flutter 3.3 release, DevTools 2.16.0 is also released to provide developers with a hassle-free programming experience. It came with exciting features like smooth scrolling for large lists, UX optimization, a display table for quick data access, etc.

Read More: What’s New in Flutter 3.13 Update

Takeaway

The Flutter 3.3 update is an interesting addition to the already-stable version release of Flutter 3. With both major upgrades releasing back to back in a matter of three months, the Flutter community has a lot to catch up with.

Nevertheless, it was the growing Flutter community that pushed these changes and upgrades to come into effect with the release of Flutter 3.3. The update majorly focuses on improving the performance and UI/UX of Flutter apps and easing developer efforts.

With these new upgrades, a business unit can build impressive features and user experiences through its Flutter app. However, hiring suitable developers for the Flutter upgrade service is a crucial step in this direction and team BiztechCS might be of help in this scenario with the huge amount of experience we have.

So, if you need to hire Flutter app developers, our seasoned Flutter developers might be of your assistance.