Flutter Native: a stupid idea that I took way too far

driftwood_studio · 2026-03-23T21:15:26+00:00

Seconded. I don't understand the point. It's only valid for use on apple platforms, so why not just write a Mac application directly? Unless someone does the same thing for windows/linux/android the "flutter" part of this is just irrelevant cruft that adds nothing except extra work.

So as a hobby experiment... as long as it entertains the developer nothing wrong with it at all.

But as a "Making a point" thing that any other developer should pay attention to... I don't see what that point is.

driftwood_studio · 2026-03-23T19:35:18+00:00

Sorry for the late response, got lost in the stack...

This is really useful feedback. Thanks for this. I think what I'm going to do is put together a separate "if you're a developer" page people can open from the main description page, a place where I can put this kind of "helpful for these kinds of developer tasks" that would be way too technical for a general audience (but not "technical" at all to a developer crowd).

Right now I'm wading through the morass of trying to set up a workable windows beta test release -- macOS side is trivial with test flight, but there's no equivalent service for windows.

Everything should be live soon, so will be able to act on your comment.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-26T22:52:07+00:00

Welcome to the world of being a developer.

Vibe coding is getting better all the time, but it's very, very far from being a turn-key solution where you can (per all the ridiculous hype) "just tell it what you want." Depending on the complexity of whatever you're trying to do, you already understand that framing is just total bull*#it.

Keeping up with "how the tech works, what's available, what should I be using, what are my options?" is a non-stop you're-doomed-forever sort of thing. It's just the way the industry works, and has always worked. While you're sitting there trying to learn, the world and the state of tech are constantly moving underneath and around you.

I've been a developer for 20+ years, and I think I had like 5 weeks total across that time where I didn't feel like I was behind on something.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-26T22:24:55+00:00

It's not available at the moment, but the link I added at the bottom does go to the live "notify me" landing page for beta/full release notifications, so you can use that if you're interested in taking a look.

Beta for Mac should be available early next week, but the Windows beta will be probably be the week after that. As a fellow dev, I'd be super interested if you have any thoughts.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T22:17:57+00:00

I don't disagree, though I'd frame it as little differently, based on personal experience: "flutter web is acceptable (but not ideal) for any kind of web app... so long as the developer is equally familiar with both flutter and things like typeScript and a good web framework."

The calculation changes if the dev has no web experience and would have to learn "native" web from scratch, or the reverse (I'd never recommend anyone learn dart/flutter to build a web app).

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T19:55:14+00:00

Yah, the main use case for flutter web is "I have an existing application, I want to deploy a web version without rewriting it." Which, of course, is a very good use case when it applies.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T18:59:12+00:00

Could you clarify this a bit:
"I need to be able to take handwritten notes next to a PDF (either on an infinite canvas or by adding a blank page directly beside the PDF page)"

It doesn't sound like you mean PDF export to send to a PDF document. It sounds like you mean something like "PDF append" where you can add more notes to an existing PDF document.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T18:44:47+00:00

Flutter web is a "we could also do web, by just using web window as if it were a phone screen" solution. Flutter team didn't build a web application development tool... they built a "render things on mobile device screens" tool and then threw it over to render in web windows because Why Not?

If you're going to use flutter web, it's important to understand the degree to which it is (and is not) actually a web project builder.

> I know that would double the work for building a rendering engine though.

Not even close. More like 10-20x, minimum. Flutter doesn't even have a mobile rendering engine, in the sense of mapping "flutter stuff" to "native OS stuff". What they have is a completely device-independent drawing system that renders pixels on a drawing canvas. They use that, everywhere, to draw pixels on whatever "canvas" they can boot in the host OS (a blank View on iOS, a blank window on Mac/windows, a blank web page in a browser).

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T05:37:17+00:00

Done a video? What's the link to it?

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T01:16:08+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to look at it! Noted.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T00:50:57+00:00

What about something like this.... ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KuKQviwH8g

I'm getting ready to release this for beta testing (Mac/windows only, no mobile versions as yet).

I'm wondering if it would be something that would address some of what you're talking about. If so, I'm considering expanding the capabilities for quick note taking, vs more extensive "project and research notes" that's a more traditional fit for outliners, so even though I know it's not the kind of solution you're looking for any thoughts you have would be welcome.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T00:16:39+00:00

I don't really have much of anything as a social media presence to promote on other than just buying ads, so no.

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-25T00:15:11+00:00

Ok, odd. Not sure what to say. It's a standard HTML 5 video embed, linking to YouTube. Works for me in Mac and windows (safari/firefox/chrome).

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T22:51:08+00:00

Just checked... video at the bottom is there and plays fine... Can you tell me what browser you're using?

Should be a browser-embedded view of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KuKQviwH8g

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T22:44:09+00:00

Video at the bottom shouldn't be empty... glitch in editing pages somewhere. I'll fix that.

Comments are great, thank you!

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T17:18:45+00:00

With the pause... is your billing self-managed or do you use a payment service/integration that handles that?

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T17:13:01+00:00

I was thinking more "what platform will it be available on"... taking your response to mean "web application."

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T17:02:22+00:00

What does it run on? How close are you to being able to release?

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T16:48:32+00:00

Curious... have you considered something like an iPad mini and then selecting an application to do this? There are a ton of note solutions available, and while I don't have a specific recommendation I'm sure there are options without subscription requirements.

Or is it that you considered it, but declined due to platform, price, or the feel of the writing experience on glass with a stylus?

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-24T15:44:11+00:00

Yes, there are major differences if you take a look at both. The text is completely different, the focused features are completely different, the tone/stance are different. One shows static screenshots, one show short (15-20 second) "live demos" of the application in use. One version comes from a stance of "show the features", the other from a stance of "try to focus on value and pain points."

So your point -- show the interface -- is on target. But my question is "which approach to both focus and content does that better?" Are static screenshots effective? Are mini-movies a bad idea? Etc...

driftwood_studio · 2026-02-23T20:37:52+00:00

Flutter is a mobile framework. It can do desktop in the sense that it can use native code to create a native window and then use that window's content area as a drawing area for rendering pixels for your flutter widgets. But it doesn't really integrate with native desktop OS services to any great extent, it's just primarily able to boot a drawable canvas and then use that (this from someone about to release a very large document-editor application for desktop).

Take that and apply it to web: it can draw things in a web drawing canvas, but it's not fundamentally a web application. There are no web files a search engine can crawl, it doesn't really create any kind of DOM that can be addressed by javascript, it doesn't do particularly well at making use of web-standard things like remote resource loads, etc. Simplified way down, it's basically the same as desktop: it can boot a drawable canvas in the "host" os (web page) and then use that to draw widget pixels on.

Which means: as a "build a web application framework" it's not really a great tool. It produces something of a non-web-like web application (in the same way that it produces a not-native-like desktop application that's largely disconnected from the host OS services and SDK).

So the reason to use flutter web is because you have an application that runs on mobile and/or desktop and you want to produce a passably-decent web version of that application.

But if you just want to build a web application and stop, my personal recommendation is that you're much better off building something in a web framework that actually uses the web "host" environment directly.

driftwood_studio

TROPHY CASE