Canonical Continues To Talk Up Google's Flutter UI Toolkit

[sheldonl]

So running the app inside a web renderer on a GTK host window somehow makes the UI "not web"? Basing the application window on a third-party toolkit provides free window system (X11/Wayland) support as well as a foundation for integrating to e.g. multimedia frameworks and system bus (D-bus).

No idea if that's what it really does or not. When you find out for certain let me know.

[Sonadow]

Looking forward to seeing if Ubuntu can pull this off properly.

If it works out well, heck perhaps we may even be able to see a Wayland DE built over Flutter.

[Luke_Wolf]

You haven’t actually said how.

I thought I was quite clear, they use an archaic, outdated, and quite frankly awful method to attempt to decompose the UI. They combine elements with data while splitting out presentation of elements. A desktop UI Toolkit splits out data instead and keeps elements and presentation together. The supposed benefit of separating out elements from presentation in being able to use CSS to rearrange elements to fit different usage cases has fallen apart so hard that most major websites are now full fledged android applications on phones.

They used JavaScript, not JSON. And gee I wonder why.

Because they needed a scripting language for their dynamic declarative UI and it's not a terrible language for what it's actually designed for... which is GUI interaction. They couldn't exactly use C++ for that and since they were using JSON already as their data format it was an obvious choice.

That’s exactly what you do in web development, lol. Elements are even more composable in web tech since they are simply functions.

[/quote]
Except they're not. They're a bunch of divs at the end of the day with javascript and CSS slurried overtop of them to fake having widgets, which adds a lot of runtime complexity and slows down the application vs having true widgets.

[cynical]

I thought I was quite clear, they use an archaic, outdated, and quite frankly awful method to attempt to decompose the UI. They combine elements with data while splitting out presentation of elements. A desktop UI Toolkit splits out data instead and keeps elements and presentation together. The supposed benefit of separating out elements from presentation in being able to use CSS to rearrange elements to fit different usage cases has fallen apart so hard that most major websites are now full fledged android applications on phones.

Except that's not how web development works? I mean yeah if you are talking about practices used in 1995 (that admittedly are still used today on some bad websites). I'm talking about how actual web applications are developed. Nobody separates CSS from JavaScript today unless they don't know what they're doing.

Except they're not. They're a bunch of divs at the end of the day with javascript and CSS slurried overtop of them to fake having widgets, which adds a lot of runtime complexity and slows down the application vs having true widgets.

Maybe you can define what you mean by widget. What is a "true widget"? And what is the difference between a "true widget" and a "fake one"? And what runtime complexity are you talking about? Sure divs and CSS have always and will always be a part of web development, but the fact that they are handled entirely in JavaScript now means they are no different than the UI primitives you use in something like Java, except that you call them something else. They are handled the same, in terms of batching changes and re-rendering the display, except far more elegantly because mutation is avoided in web development these days.

[curfew]

Looking forward to seeing if Ubuntu can pull this off properly.

If it works out well, heck perhaps we may even be able to see a Wayland DE built over Flutter.

At this point Flutter is simply a lean UI toolkit, not a complete functional framework. For that purpose it uses GTK on Linux. At this point I'm not sure why I would care more about Flutter taking over the desktop environments more than, say, QML for example.

Although, if QML is for Qt, then Flutter might be the same for GTK... The separation here could be that QML can be freely mixed with classic Qt widgets as well, but Flutter is intended to be a standalone solution and not really exposing the GTK features underneath. (Because then it stops being cross-platform.)

[curfew]

No idea if that's what it really does or not. When you find out for certain let me know.

I do know.

[cynical]

No idea if that's what it really does or not. When you find out for certain let me know.

It uses Skia for rendering, not native widgets. You could consider that web since that's what browsers use, but it's not really web specific.

Although, if QML is for Qt, then Flutter might be the same for GTK... The separation here could be that QML can be freely mixed with classic Qt widgets as well, but Flutter is intended to be a standalone solution and not really exposing the GTK features underneath. (Because then it stops being cross-platform.)

Or it could be the same for both. Nothing stops you from creating Qt widgets. Or you could just not do native integration at all. For something like a kiosk, appliance, or special domain, it makes a lot of sense to do a custom UI.

[Guest]

I wonder why they decided to choose Flutter. I doubt it's for performance, GTK4 has an excellent GL backend and a Vulkan experimental one.

Maybe customization? I heard it's quite easy to change how a Flutter app looks and Canonical has traditionally disliked GHI guidelines.

Cross platform? Wha... what? Are they planning on making their installer work as a Windows app too?

Most likely due to the whole Qt fiasco. Qt could have been a nice cross-platform option, but now that's no longer possible, unless a fork is made.

[Guest]

Yeah, let's all get on board with another GUI framework written in a web technology [/sarcasm]

I wish these idiots would use proper tools, or to put it another way, actual systems programming languages. Web technologies suck. GC sucks.

We're just throwing performance down the drain because people won't learn to program properly in something like C, C++, or even Rust (not a fan of Rust myself, but at least it's a proper systems programming language).

It's more about cost saving for companies. Managers see cross-platform, big dollar signs show up in their eyes and they assume it will reduce development costs.......

[Mez']

That claim is questionable and also meaningless as a measure of quality.

The only value in Ubuntu is that it keeps low IQ people away from proper distros and allows one to quickly determine whether a Linux user is a moron or not. Only a moron, or at the very least a complete beginner, would use Ubuntu.

This comment is factually as much as morally wrong. I will disregard it entirely.
I hope it will be taken care of by moderation.