An introduction to cross platform mobile development with Flutter

An introduction to cross-platform mobile development with Flutter, with Tom Alabaster.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for developers who want to gain some hands on introductory experience using Flutter to create mobile apps. No prior experience with Flutter or Dart is required but it would be beneficial to have some background experience with an object oriented language such as C# or Java for example.

What are the timings?

Session 1 will start at 9:00am so please arrive at least 15 minutes before this and at least 30 minutes before if you’d like some assistance getting your environment set up. We will aim to finish at 5pm.

There will also be short tea breaks after sessions 2 and 6 and will have 45 minutes for lunch after session 4.

What will be covered?

• Session 1 - Introduction and laying the groundwork
• Session 2 - Using the important UI components
• Session 3 - Lists and updating our UI
• Session 4 - UI libraries and tapping stuff
• Session 5 - Navigation
• Session 6 - Asynchronous UI
• Session 7 - Packages, basic testing and running native code (all if time permits)

What should I bring?

Please bring a laptop and charger with Flutter ready to go (see below) with you. If you will be using a Mac, it’s not necessary to bring an iOS device to use, the iOS simulator is perfectly fine and is what I’ll be using. If you won’t be using a Mac and have access to and Android phone, please bring this and the appropriate USB cable, otherwise the an Android emulator will suffice.

What should I do to prepare?

1. Please follow the steps appropriate for the OS on the laptop you’ll be bringing to the workshop: https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install
2. Please follow the steps here to get Visual Studio Code ready to use with Flutter: https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/editor?tab=vscode I’ll be using Visual Studio Code and recommend you do to over Android Studio for this workshop
3. Please follow the steps here to confirm you can run a Flutter app on a device, emulator or simulator: https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/test-drive?tab=vscode

It is important to have a working Flutter installation before coming to the workshop and depending on what you already have installed, it could take some time to get up and running.

Lastly, if you wanted to take a look at Dart, have a scroll down here: https://dart.dev/samples There’s no need to go past classes, though.

Where is it held?

Conference Room 2, The King’s Center, 63-75 King St, Norwich, NR1 1PH

Still need convincing?

Flutter is Google’s cross platform development framework. It enables developers to make apps for both Android and iOS (and soon for desktop and the web) from a single codebase. It produces native apps with native performance and can allow for significantly faster development times. Having been making mobile apps for over 4 years, I haven’t been a lover of cross platform frameworks until now, and while I could go back to writing purely native apps, I see very few reasons to as long as Flutter is around. If you come to this workshop, you will get some hands on introductory experience with using Flutter, and will hopefully come away being able to make an informed decision on whether or not it’s right for you or your development team going forward.

I hope to see you there!

Tom Alabaster
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-a/

Tom is a mobile developer at earthware (https://earthware.co.uk) and has been doing mobile development for more than 4 years. He's used native development tools and various cross-platform technologies in the past but has always been hunting for the "holy grail" of mobile app development.

Flutter and the related logo are trademarks of Google LLC. This is not affiliated with or otherwise sponsored by Google LLC.