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Flutter in Action
Summary
In 2017, consumers downloaded 178 billion apps, and analysts predict growth to 258 billion by 2022. Mobile customers are demanding more—and better—apps, and it’s up to developers like you to write them! Flutter, a revolutionary new cross-platform software development kit created by Google, makes it easier than ever to write secure, high-performance native apps for iOS and Android. Flutter apps are blazingly fast because this open source solution compiles your Dart code to platform-specific programs with no JavaScript bridge! Flutter also supports hot reloading to update changes instantly. And thanks to its built-in widgets and rich motion APIs, Flutter’s apps are not just highly responsive, they’re stunning!
Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.
About the technology
With Flutter, you can build mobile applications using a single, feature-rich SDK that includes everything from a rendering engine to a testing environment. Flutter compiles programs written in Google’s intuitive Dart language to platform-specific code so your iOS and Android games, utilities, and shopping platforms all run like native Java or Swift apps.
About the book
Flutter in Action teaches you to build professional-quality mobile applications using the Flutter SDK and the Dart programming language. You’ll begin with a quick tour of Dart essentials and then dive into engaging, well-described techniques for building beautiful user interfaces using Flutter’s huge collection of built-in widgets. The combination of diagrams, code examples, and annotations makes learning a snap. As you go, you’ll appreciate how the author makes easy reading of complex topics like routing, state management, and async programming.
What's inside
Understanding the Flutter approach to the UI
All the Dart you need to get started
Creating custom animations
Testing and debugging
About the reader
You’ll need basic web or mobile app development skills.
About the author
Eric Windmill is a professional Dart developer and a contributor to open-source Flutter projects. His work is featured on the Flutter Showcase page.
Table of
PART 1 - MEET FLUTTER
1 ¦ Meet Flutter
2 ¦ A brief intro to Dart
3 ¦ Breaking into Flutter
PART 2 - FLUTTER USER INTERACTION, STYLES, AND ANIMATIONS
4 ¦ Flutter Important widgets, themes, and layout
5 ¦ User Forms and gestures
6 ¦ Pushing Flutter animations and using the canvas
PART 3 - STATE MANAGEMENT AND ASYNCHRONOUS DART
7 ¦ Flutter routing in depth
8 ¦ Flutter state management
9 ¦ Async Dart and Flutter and infinite scrolling
PART 4 - BEYOND FOUNDATIONS
10 ¦ Working with HTTP, Firestore, and JSON
11 ¦ Testing Flutter apps
In 2017, consumers downloaded 178 billion apps, and analysts predict growth to 258 billion by 2022. Mobile customers are demanding more—and better—apps, and it’s up to developers like you to write them! Flutter, a revolutionary new cross-platform software development kit created by Google, makes it easier than ever to write secure, high-performance native apps for iOS and Android. Flutter apps are blazingly fast because this open source solution compiles your Dart code to platform-specific programs with no JavaScript bridge! Flutter also supports hot reloading to update changes instantly. And thanks to its built-in widgets and rich motion APIs, Flutter’s apps are not just highly responsive, they’re stunning!
Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.
About the technology
With Flutter, you can build mobile applications using a single, feature-rich SDK that includes everything from a rendering engine to a testing environment. Flutter compiles programs written in Google’s intuitive Dart language to platform-specific code so your iOS and Android games, utilities, and shopping platforms all run like native Java or Swift apps.
About the book
Flutter in Action teaches you to build professional-quality mobile applications using the Flutter SDK and the Dart programming language. You’ll begin with a quick tour of Dart essentials and then dive into engaging, well-described techniques for building beautiful user interfaces using Flutter’s huge collection of built-in widgets. The combination of diagrams, code examples, and annotations makes learning a snap. As you go, you’ll appreciate how the author makes easy reading of complex topics like routing, state management, and async programming.
What's inside
Understanding the Flutter approach to the UI
All the Dart you need to get started
Creating custom animations
Testing and debugging
About the reader
You’ll need basic web or mobile app development skills.
About the author
Eric Windmill is a professional Dart developer and a contributor to open-source Flutter projects. His work is featured on the Flutter Showcase page.
Table of
PART 1 - MEET FLUTTER
1 ¦ Meet Flutter
2 ¦ A brief intro to Dart
3 ¦ Breaking into Flutter
PART 2 - FLUTTER USER INTERACTION, STYLES, AND ANIMATIONS
4 ¦ Flutter Important widgets, themes, and layout
5 ¦ User Forms and gestures
6 ¦ Pushing Flutter animations and using the canvas
PART 3 - STATE MANAGEMENT AND ASYNCHRONOUS DART
7 ¦ Flutter routing in depth
8 ¦ Flutter state management
9 ¦ Async Dart and Flutter and infinite scrolling
PART 4 - BEYOND FOUNDATIONS
10 ¦ Working with HTTP, Firestore, and JSON
11 ¦ Testing Flutter apps
353 pages, ebook
Published September 7, 2019
24 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 18, 2020
One of the best programming books I've read. Totally recommended to beginners and anyone with a little experience with Flutter. This work is not only a very clever introduction to the framework but also a refresh or gentle guide to the foundations of modern mobile UI development, paying special attention to the power that modern Dart coding brings to Flutter.
April 1, 2020
Written by Eric Windmill. As the name describes, this book is about Google’s open source hybrid framework which can be used to develop mobile applications for the android and iOS platforms. If you are a back end/front end/full stack developer, interested in mobile app development this will be one of the good choices to start with. The app can be developed in record time. If you are familiar with this framework, you can develop a complete app within a month.
Flutter is already taking the space of hybrid mobile app development domain. One of the main reasons is unlike other frameworks like Ionic, React Native, etc., flutter doesn’t use custom bridge between the framework and mobile OS. It compiles and builds the code into native byte codes, which runs comparatively faster than those apps. Another reason is with almost no need to write platform specific codes for iOS/android. Currently, the framework team is working on to make the same code to work as web application as well. So, single code base multiple platforms is the agenda.
Even though, React Native has well-established support and online community, I hope sooner or later flutter will take the space. Already the flutter user base is growing rapidly.
As it is open source, already there are so many flutter packages available which can be used for most of the current day scenarios. There will nearly zero need we have to write code from beginning for several tasks. Mostly we have to wire the packages to meet our requirements.
As this book is released under manning series, the standard of this book is great as usual. Whenever I want to read a book on any particular technology, I will do search first under manning is there any book for it. If there is, no further search I do. I pick it. This is due to the way the book is designed, the content organized and the way of briefing. This book is no exception.
If asked, I can give one feedback on this book. Usually, most of the manning books will use the same example from beginning to end to describe the concepts, which means they will develop an app from the beginning till the end. On every chapter the app will be introduced with new features based on the concepts briefed there. But this book is not designed that way. The examples are getting started newly for every few chapters. This gives a bit of discontinuation as a learner. It would have been great if we have used the same app as example, so that we can easily connect with.
In overall, to learn the flutter framework, this book is the one stop solution as on today. But we have to remember Flutter is not just this book alone. This book gives the basic idea and road map to learn and explore further.
Flutter is already taking the space of hybrid mobile app development domain. One of the main reasons is unlike other frameworks like Ionic, React Native, etc., flutter doesn’t use custom bridge between the framework and mobile OS. It compiles and builds the code into native byte codes, which runs comparatively faster than those apps. Another reason is with almost no need to write platform specific codes for iOS/android. Currently, the framework team is working on to make the same code to work as web application as well. So, single code base multiple platforms is the agenda.
Even though, React Native has well-established support and online community, I hope sooner or later flutter will take the space. Already the flutter user base is growing rapidly.
As it is open source, already there are so many flutter packages available which can be used for most of the current day scenarios. There will nearly zero need we have to write code from beginning for several tasks. Mostly we have to wire the packages to meet our requirements.
As this book is released under manning series, the standard of this book is great as usual. Whenever I want to read a book on any particular technology, I will do search first under manning is there any book for it. If there is, no further search I do. I pick it. This is due to the way the book is designed, the content organized and the way of briefing. This book is no exception.
If asked, I can give one feedback on this book. Usually, most of the manning books will use the same example from beginning to end to describe the concepts, which means they will develop an app from the beginning till the end. On every chapter the app will be introduced with new features based on the concepts briefed there. But this book is not designed that way. The examples are getting started newly for every few chapters. This gives a bit of discontinuation as a learner. It would have been great if we have used the same app as example, so that we can easily connect with.
In overall, to learn the flutter framework, this book is the one stop solution as on today. But we have to remember Flutter is not just this book alone. This book gives the basic idea and road map to learn and explore further.
June 30, 2020
Pretty good:)! It's best to combine this book with the info on flutter.dev
June 6, 2025
It was a great book for experienced engineers with no exposure to mobile, Flutter, or Dart development. The approach was good initially. However as you get to the more advanced topics, it was difficult to digest. Reading would have been faster/easier with more diagrams and code and less talking.
There were typos and writing mistakes throughout the book, even in code.
There were typos and writing mistakes throughout the book, even in code.
October 10, 2019
I would expect more insights or "behind the hood" aspects of this technology. This book is rather for beginner mobile developer.
June 5, 2022
I started reading this book due to my trust in the Manning editorial and was I wrong.
There are loads of edition errors where, for instance, the explanation of a code block refers to columns while the code is about rows.
Many code examples are pointless. The example about forms is awful. There are two text fields, one of them is always ignored and by the end of the chapter the author says "I don't actually care about the state. I only included it for an extra example". Man, if a part of code is dead please get rid of it.
I don't really blame the author, this is his first book. I'm appalled by the editorial team at Manning for allowing this to be published in this form.
There are loads of edition errors where, for instance, the explanation of a code block refers to columns while the code is about rows.
Many code examples are pointless. The example about forms is awful. There are two text fields, one of them is always ignored and by the end of the chapter the author says "I don't actually care about the state. I only included it for an extra example". Man, if a part of code is dead please get rid of it.
I don't really blame the author, this is his first book. I'm appalled by the editorial team at Manning for allowing this to be published in this form.
April 3, 2020
Still reading book but wannt to recommend to people out there that could not decide which Flutter book to choose (If you cant/want to buy all of them). I checked most of them and stick with this one. Real review coming soon
August 13, 2020
What I didn't like is that there are a lot of chapters just talking about why flutter is so great and also some chapters where so superficial like the state management and asyncronous dart, I was hopping to get more code examples.
April 14, 2020
One of a few technical books 📚 I've read with immaculate explanations.
June 14, 2020
Best book that I’ve found for flutter. It illustrates concepts well. I highly recommend this over most.
September 29, 2021
you don't need this book at all. content is sometimes outdated and presentation is poor. much better content available free online. use youtube + official flutter and dart documentation for best learning.
July 4, 2024
Learned a lot. Wasn’t always clear and seemed unfinished overall. Really liked several of the explanations including the bloc section. Recommended overall.
October 25, 2023
What will I focus on in this book:
- Building professional-quality apps
- Routing, state management, and async programming
- Building professional-quality apps
- Routing, state management, and async programming
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews