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    Eugene Saturow Head of Flutter

    Flutter Apps: Widgets All Around

    Flutter widget app development provides multiple advantages, allowing companies to cut down expenses by 30%–40% and reduce time to market (TTM) while saving quality. The SDK has a range of tools and components that enable software engineers to streamline processes such as design and testing. 

    Flutter components

    In this article, we will talk about Flutter widgets helping teams significantly improve the speed of creating the user interface (UI). 

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    What is a widget in Flutter?

    It is often quite challenging to deliver the same look for iOS and Android apps due to different screen sizes and other design peculiarities. Coming up with numerous customizable widgets (Google Material Design, Cupertino, etc.) available out of the box, the technology eliminates this problem. Employing platform, visual, and animated widgets, software experts build user-friendly solutions with a modern UI in a more rapid way.

    The technology does not separate views, layouts, or other properties. Instead, the SDK has a widget, which is a unified object model. For example, a structural or stylistic app element is defined as a widget. In fact, a widget is an immutable description of the UI part. Flutter widgets can be inflated into so-called elements that control the underlying render tree. 

    Widget types and functions

    There are two main types of Flutter widgets — stateful and stateless. The state means any element that exists in the app memory. This involves all widgets maintaining the UI, for instance, icons, animations, and text fonts.

    These widgets do not display anything. Instead, they only take and, like a constructor, collect a display from others. 

    • Stateful widgets. The state is mutable and can be changed once a widget is developed. Programmers can modify the state multiple times with different data sets, buttons, and variables.
    • Stateless widgets. It is impossible to alter the state of widgets once they are created. Since the state is immutable, changes in data, variables, etc. can not influence the state.
    Flutter widget categories

    You can search for widgets by category or see all of them in the widget index.

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    How to avoid mistakes

    Improper use of widgets, for example, the creation of multiple heavyweight widgets, may lead to performance issues. Engineers often combine several widgets instead of using an existing pre-built one, which results in increased TTM.

    To avoid these problems, it is advisable to keep pace with Flutter upgrades and open-source contributions. Developers need to know what widgets exist, how they work, and what possibilities they provide. For now, the SDK offers a variety of widgets available out of the box that can solve the majority of tasks.

    web and mobile apps

    Examples of projects we built using Flutter and its widgets: neobank, video streaming and pharmacy apps.

    Conclusion

    Flutter widget app development allows for creating the UI much faster while implementing the same look for iOS and Android. Here at Surf, we use the technology to deliver performant software products with a native-like UX. Our team has extensive experience in building Flutter applications. We also make open-source solutions that facilitate the work of engineers. To learn more, check out open-source tools and libraries developed by Surf.