avatarFred Grott

Summary

The web content discusses the implementation of the Flutter Adaptive Scaffold UX pattern, emphasizing the need for developers to manually create breakpoints in line with Material Design 3 specifications, as the Flutter SDK lacks a built-in solution for this UX pattern.

Abstract

The article titled "How To Write Flutter Adaptive Scaffold Breakpoints Like Were A GDE" addresses the absence of the Adaptive Scaffold UX pattern in the Flutter SDK. It criticizes Flutter Google Developer Experts (GDEs) for not providing sufficient guidance on this topic, despite its inclusion in Material Design 2 and 3 specifications. The author points out that the Material Design team at Google has acknowledged the need for a layout UX pattern that accommodates diverse devices, including laptops, desktops, and foldables. However, the Flutter SDK still expects developers to craft their own adaptive scaffold solutions. The article suggests that developers should focus on implementing Material Design 3 breakpoints as a first step towards achieving an adaptive scaffold UX pattern for their Flutter apps. It also notes that the Flutter SDK team has not provided an animated transition to rail navigation as outlined in Material Design 3, leading to the recommendation that developers should not prioritize this feature and instead concentrate on the breakpoints.

Opinions

  • The author expresses disappointment with Flutter GDEs for not addressing the adaptive scaffold UX pattern, which is essential for creating responsive Flutter apps.
  • There is a critique of the Flutter SDK for not having a pre-built adaptive scaffold solution, despite the pattern being part of Material Design specifications for several versions.
  • The author implies that the Flutter SDK team is negligent in implementing certain Material Design 3 features, such as animated transitions to rail navigation, suggesting developers should not wait for these features to be included in the SDK.
  • The article suggests that developers should take matters into their own hands to implement the adaptive scaffold UX pattern, as relying on the Flutter SDK or GDE guidance may not be fruitful.
  • The author emphasizes the importance of understanding and modeling app screen breakpoints according to Material Design 3 to achieve a responsive design for Flutter apps.

How To Write Flutter Adaptive Scaffold Breakpoints Like Were A GDE

Flutter Adaptive Scaffold UX pattern is not in the Flutter SDK, this is the first step in that UX pattern in the form of breakpoints like you were a Flutter GDE.

Look, I have to shame Flutter GDE’s as they are not writing the stuff that you need in creating that awesome flutter app. And here is the thing, I can go through the top two presenters at Google IOs the last five years and find their IO demo apps and there in fact is right in their code an attempt at implementing an adaptive scaffold UX pattern.

And in fact, the adaptive scaffold UX pattern has been in the Material Design specification in two versions, both Material Design 2 and Material Design 3. What has changed is that the Material Design team at Google has finally realized that there is no good layout UX pattern to handle two types of large content form-devices of both laptops and desktops and foldables. And we still have the Flutter SDK insisting that some magical package will correctly implement this adaptive scaffold material design UX pattern.

The dirty little flutter SDK secret is that you, the app designer, will always have to implement your own use case of that adaptive scaffold UX pattern yourself. And the other dirty little secret is that no Flutter GDE is covering such Flutter and Material Design subject areas.

And the third dirty secret is that while Material Design 3 also calls for an animated transition to rail navigation like Material Design 2 did, the flutter SDK team has never implemented it. That means in my experience of using more than 5 front-end frameworks that we can safely ignore it and let the Flutter SDK team worry about it instead.

So the first step towards your very own adaptive scaffold UX pattern for your flutter app is to implement the material design 3 breakpoints. I show you a very specific way to read the Material Design 3 specification and a very specific way to model the app screen breakpoints.

https://open.substack.com/pub/fredgrott/p/how-to-write-flutter-adaptive-scaffold?r=26egx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Flutter
Flutter App Development
Flutter Widget
Flutter Ui
Software Engineering
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