In the last years, the number of different computer platforms increased from Desktop, mobile devices, tablets to the Web. Among others, cross-platform frameworks enable to target all platforms. One of those cross-platform frameworks is Flutter which is developed by Google and targets Windows Desktop in beta stage since 2020. Because of this early stage, it is relevant to verify how well Flutter already works on Windows Desktop. In the first part of this bachelor thesis, we compare a simple image gallery in Flutter and WPF with .NET 5. The implementation in both frameworks worked well with similar kind of realization. Our comparison concentrates on metrics such as code, startup time, and packaged size. In addition, we measure RAM usage and CPU usage. We measure these in two scenarios which we automated with a simulation script. In the second part, we focus on the available third-party extensions and the current missing functionalities of the Flutter framework. Our results indicate that we could implement the Flutter application with 55% less code and with a 70 times faster startup time. Surprisingly, Flutter uses less RAM most of the time, but instead, it needs more CPU to process the images. Nevertheless, there are some missing important functionalities for Desktop applications such as adding icons in the system tray or adding a menubar to the application. We show that some functionality is still missing in the current stage of the Flutter framework, but it has a good chance to become a well established framework for new developers.

Keywords: Desktop, WPF, Windows, Cross-Platform, Flutter, Use-Case Study