Off topic: My Photo Guide 2.0 app for Android is available – for free

July 25, 2015 edwardm 1 Comment

Version 2.0 of my Photo Guide app for Android is now available – it is free, no ads either. No special permissions are required to install. Only works on Android 5 or newer.

Works on Android 4.4 and newer.

(Update: An updated version for 4.4 will be available in the store in about 1-2 days – its been uploaded and is awaiting Google processing. In the mean time, the version in the store works on Android 5.x).

Screen shot: Click on the icon to go direct to the Google Play store and request a download:

Alternate link if a browser blocker interferes with that: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pevest.photoguide

This app was originally written using the Eclipse software development system, and the PhoneGap and JQuery Mobile libraries. The new version was converted to use Cordova (similar to PhoneGap) and the project was transferred to the new Android Studio for compilation and testing. This app was NOT written using MIT App Inventor.

Android Development

Google to end support of Eclipse for Android s/w development

July 24, 2015 edwardm 1 Comment

I posted the following on my App Inventor Facebook page – only a fraction of readers use the FB page so I am cross posting back over this blog. Usually I post items on the blog first, and then those end up on FB.

If you would like to follow the Facebook page, click here and then click on Like and also select “Get Notifications”.

Google will end support for Android Software development using the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment as they migrate development over to Google’s own Android Studio.

See here for details: http://www.androidcentral.com/google-stop-development-and-support-android-developer-tools-eclipse

This does NOT impact MIT App Inventor coders!

Eclipse and Android Studio are used for developing Android apps written in the Java programming language, and relying on the Android Software Development Kit of libraries of code. These tools are used to develop most Android apps as they are capable of using all of the features provided by Android, while MIT App Inventor limits us to a subset.

I just spent several days getting Android Studio up and running and reconfiguring an old project so that it now builds entirely in Android Studio. That Eclipse will be going away was sort of obvious.

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I have completed all of the text for my next App Inventor e-book. However, once I finished, I decided to add even more! I am hard at work on one more chapter! I think a lot of people are going to love Volume 3 and I cannot wait to share it with you! However, its the middle of summer and my wife would like us to take an actual vacation so I need to work hard on my vacation skills for a few days before I can wrap up the book!

I hope to share a lot more with you in very early August.

App Inventor News, Components

New App Inventor 2 “Companion” app released today; new features

July 1, 2015 edwardm

Changes between nb143i and nb144 (June 30, 2015)

When a component is renamed in the designer, any related collapsed blocks will be properly renamed now.
Screen1 now has properties that permit you to hide both the top “Status” and “Title” Bars
The selected item in a ListView is now highlighted
Activity Starter component now has a “Activity Canceled” event
Fix to the Player Component so it doesn’t spontaneously start playing after a phone call or other interruption
Bugfix to Image Sprite rotation which had left screen artifacts on some devices
Add Math blocks to convert between decimal, Hexidecimal and Binary representation
Clock Component now permits you to format a date or time arbitrarily. You provide a “format string”
You can now have both a Background Image and a Background Color and the “right thing” happens
TextToSpeech: The designer now uses dropdown menus to select Country and Language. Added blocks to fetch the supports countries and languages on a given device

Source: Release Notes for MIT App Inventor 2 (Beta)