Whether you want to draw attention to the salient points of a sentence or indicate to user’s that certain text is hyperlinked, at some point in your Flutter Journey you’re going to want to underline some text. Fortunately, Flutter offers several solutions that will get you from this to t̲h̲i̲s̲.

FYI I used yaytext.com to add the underline in Medium

As the old adage goes, the simplest solution is usually the best solution. On that note, we will begin our investigation with the Text widget.

The Text Widget

The simplest version of a text underline can be done by specifying a TextDecoration inside your Text widget’s TextStyle. …

Inspired by this Stack Overflow post

For an app that deals heavily with uploading and downloading images from a server, file size can make or break the user experience. Large files will take longer to save, display, and manipulate, all of which will affect the app’s network performance. Depending on how image-heavy the application is, users may spend more time staring at loading screens than actually interacting with content.

The HTTP Archive has some interesting data on how often mobile applications and websites request images, as well as the average size of those images. …

By following this CodeLab, you’ll be able to add Google Maps to your Flutter application in less than an hour. It’s actually pretty crazy how easy it is. Set up your API keys, add the GoogleMap widget to your widget tree, and enjoy the same map browsing experience you typical enjoy with the Google Maps application.

After getting acquainted with the google_maps_flutter package however, you’ll inevitably want to customize your map markers and realize that the available solutions are rather limited.

Use Image Assets

• Create a BitmapDescriptor from an Image Asset
• Create a Custom Marker from an Image Asset

Use Network…

I’ve used Google’s Firebase/Firestore database solution for nearly 6 months and had come to believe that it was an unstoppable force. If you’re only dealing with numbers, strings, and other simple data forms, this is true. The NoSQL database gives you immense control over how you store information a provides querying tools that can be used to find items meeting very specific criteria in a snap.

But if you’re interested in storing and retrieving larger files like images and audio clips, Firestore is not the solution you need.

Instead, you’ll need to use Cloud Storage. Google designed this storage solution specifically for storing user-generated content like images and videos and behind the scenes it features cool benefits like intermittent uploading and downloading based on your app’s connectivity status. …

Flutter Newbies Start Here

If you’re new to Flutter development, I’d recommend starting with something a little less involved.

I used this book to learn the Flutter language:

Beginning Flutter: A Hands On Guide to App Development

And this one to get started with mobile app development:

Android Studio 3.4 Development Essentials — Kotlin Edition: Developing Android Apps Using Android Studio 3.4, Kotlin and Jetpack

…And Let’s Go

Good morning, afternoon, and evening to all the Flutter developers in the world and welcome to the blog post that’s going to make you love Google’s cross-platform development language more than you already do! For those of you that aren’t familiar with the number one rising language for mobile development, get familiar. …

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) are incredibly useful if you are designing and developing for multiple, uniquely sized device screens. Rather than defining the pixels within an image, an SVG defines the lines, curves, colors, and opacities that should be used to draw an image. In this way, an SVG will appear crisp and un-distorted regardless of the available space.

This is not the only benefit of SVGs, though. Because each separate piece of an SVG is defined by coordinate-like values, you can handle interaction with each piece separately. For example, you could create a map where each country can be selected and highlighted. Or you could hide the parts of an image that a user taps on. …

Google’s Cloud Firestore is a tool that should be in every mobile app developer’s tool belt. The flexible and scalable database that it provides is unlike anything a coder could create alone and if your app is designed for a global audience, there aren’t many solutions like it. Plus, there’s a Flutter package ( cloud_firestore) that’s designed to make Flutter and Flame play nicely together.

Unfortunately, there is one downside. The tool isn’t free to use and every read/write transaction your app makes with the Firestore database is counted against your daily quota (50,000 daily reads and 20,000 daily writes for the free tier plan). …

When designing a new app, there’s a lot of work that goes into designing and implementing the app logic. You need to design your database structure, the navigational scheme, and the user interface all while trying to stick to a coherent theme. When all is said and done, the development process for a small app can take between 3 and 9 months …and you might not always get it right the first time. …