Flutter is a game-changer not only in cross-platform mobile development but also in web development. Flutter’s stable web release is here to stay, bringing production-quality support for web apps. In a moment, we are going to go over the best Flutter apps under 5kB of Dart code.
Flutter’s web support has brought about innovations and makes highly sophisticated apps with hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics and flexible layout and paint APIs possible. It offers an app-centric framework that takes full advantage of everything the modern web has to offer.
Moreover, Flutter makes it easier to build responsive screens that adapt to different devices and appropriately fit users’ screens, all in one code base.
The Flutter UI toolkit is specially useful on three particular app scenarios:
- Progressive web apps (PWAs) that combine the web’s reach along with the capabilities of a desktop app.
- Single page apps (SPAs) that load once and transmit data to and from internet services.
- Existing Flutter mobile apps that are being migrated to the web, enabling shared code for both experiences.
Here you can check Flutter’s power on the web.
But, most valuable of all, is that this power comes with less weight and, therefore, with, native performance. This is a major plus since native performance leads to better user experience and we know for a fact this correlates with user retention.
Flutter Create
Flutter Create is an annual contest that challenges developers to build interesting, inspiring, and beautiful apps with Flutter using 5kB or less of Dart code.
Just to put things into perspective, 5kB is equivalent to:
- Less than half a second of your average music file. A MP3 file is usually encoded at 128kbps (kilobits/sec). That’s 128/8 = 16 kilobytes/second. So 5kB is 0.3125s of a typical MP3 file.
- Less than 0.05% of the size of the HTML specification. Less than 5% of the size of the HTML specification’s table of contents, even.
- The size of an 80×60 original image encoded in GIF format.
But, what can be built within this size restriction? Can something beautiful be so small? Check out this video and prepare to be surprised.
Isn’t it amazing? We find it impressive for sure.
The winners: best Flutter apps
The 2020 winners have not been announced yet and we are looking forward to seeing what the community builds!
Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the 2019 winners:
Grand Prize Winner: Compass by Zebiao Hu
This Flutter app uses the magnetometer, accelerometer, location sensors in order to get a user’s current direction, location, weather, temperature, humidity, etc. When you scroll up, it shows a globe that users can rotate to get real-time weather data.
Visual Beauty Winner: Relax by Erin Morrissey
This meditation app displays rain, forests, sunsets, and oceans with their corresponding sounds. Users can choose between four nature sounds and it alternates through related images while the sounds are playing.
Code Quality Winner: Pocket Piano by Rody Davis
This is a piano built for Web, iOS and Android. Pocket Piano gives you the option to change the octave (by sliding to the left or right), as well as the key width. You can also toggle labels on the keys and play any note (or notes) by tapping. The piano also fully supports semantics for screen reader users. Here is the repo.
Overall Execution Winner: TimeFlow by Fabian Stein
Timeflow is a timer that displays a sphere that shatters into pieces and slowly reassembles in one, two, or three minutes, as selected (you can see the reassembly in the video above).
Other Submissions
Judging is no easy task, here we’ll list our top 5 apps. You can find all submissions here.
Shooter Game
This simple shooter game was created using Flutter and Flare with no game engine whatsoever.
Elements-App
Elements lets you browse the elements of the periodic table!
This Flutter app was developed specially for the Flutter Create 2019 contest. In addition to showing you the various elements, it also includes helpful snippets of information about each one.
Elements is a cross-platform app that can run both on Android and iOS.
Lifenticon
Lifention is a combination of Game of Life and Identicon.
This app lets you assess how your name would do in Conway’s Game of Life by turning it into an Identicon—that is, a visual representation of a hash value—and using it as the seed of the system.
Flutter memory game
Memory is based on the classic card game. It starts by showing all the cards face down. Two cards are then flipped over each turn. The object of the game is, of course, to turn over pairs of matching cards.
Memory has been tested on both simulated and physical Android devices as well as simulated iOS devices.
FidgetDice
FidgetDice is an App that acts as a fidget-cube.
Final thoughts on best Flutter apps under 5kB of Dart Code
As you can see, beautiful things can be built with Flutter, even with a restrictive size limitation. We can’t wait to see the 2020 contest results!
