Flutter and Dart Cookbook

Chapter 10. Developing User Interfaces

In this chapter, we move on to the topic of building user interfaces. Now that you have mastered the basics of Flutter widgets, the next step involves extending your knowledge to other key areas. The discussion focuses on the key technical elements of designing a beautiful interface. You will learn how to:

• Utilize fonts to enhance the text interface

• Define the on-screen layout for better placement

• Address identification of the host platform

• Leverage the features of Flutter to fundamentally improve your applications

• Understand how to address platform-specific areas of functionality through the Dart SDK

• Construct code that works with Flutter to present information in the most performant manner

Hopefully, the recipes incorporated in this chapter will allow you to take your development journey to the next level. Often, simple changes such as selection of fonts and the addition of responsiveness to your application make a huge difference to the overall impression. The recipes shown in this chapter will be key to building extensible applications to delight your users.

10.1 Using the Google Fonts Package

Problem

You want to use external fonts in a Flutter application.

Solution

Flutter allows you to incorporate external fonts as part of your application. If you are not sure how to add a fonts package, see Recipe 8.4.

Here’s how to use Google Fonts to display a custom font in a Flutter application:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart' ...