Category Archives: User Interface/Design

Part 1: Storing and accessing user interface components as variables

App Inventor programmers routinely store values, such as numbers or text strings (“Hello!”) in variables. For example,

stores the numeric value 6 in to the variable TOTALBUTTONS.

To illustrate by example, here is a global variable named SpecialButton. We can initialize it to anything we want at this point.

Next, inside our app, our blocks code assigns Button1 to the variable SpecialButton. SpecialButton now holds a reference to the actual user interface control Button1.

Since SpecialButton is a variable and not an actual button, we cannot directly use a SpecialButton.Click handler but we can use a feature of App Inventor to do the same thing in a different way. We will see how to do this in this a bit later.

You can store any App Inventor components – a Clock, a Bluetooth device – any component, in a variable.

Why would you want to do that? We will see in the example in this lesson.

This tutorial is in both written form and as an online video.

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Using buttons to simulate a column chart in App Inventor Code

Clark Hochgraf has a blog post on using button controls as a simple way to draw a column chart. This is a clever idea. I created a sample program to illustrate the idea in a bit more depth, with multiple columns.

User Interface View

Let us look at our sample program’s user interface. The screen displays a colorful column chart – but those columns are actually buttons stretched vertically.

Our demo app displays two kinds of column chart features. The first is that columns 1 through 5 are drawn based on the data values (separated by spaces) entered in the text box, at top, followed by pressing the Draw Chart With Data button.

Screenshot_20161010-162157

 

The sixth column (labeled imaginatively “6”!) is controlled by the Slider control. Adjust the control to the left, and column 6 becomes shorter; adjust to the right and column 6 becomes taller. That idea was shown in Clark Hochgraf’s example too.

Designer View

We set up our app by creating a horizontal layout, at top, for a label (“Data (5 values):”) and a text box for data entry. Next, we add a button and label it “Draw Chart With Data”.

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Making “pretty” App Inventor user interface controls

In the real world, “user interfaces” look like electric light switches, push buttons or control knobs, temperature dials on ovens, volume controls on radios and so forth. We can mimic these types of controls for our touch screen Android apps. We do not have to rely on the boring desktop-like clickable button or checkboxes in the App Inventor user interface palette.

A previous tutorial showed a trick to make the color of a button vary continuously. This tutorial shows how to use our own images, instead of the boring button, together with a bit of code to bring these buttons to life.

User Interface View

Below is a sample “toggle switch”. Press the switch icon once and the toggle moves to the right; press it again and the toggle moves back to the left.

toggleswitch1

toggleswitch2

Here is a slide switch. Press the slide switch once and the switch position moves to the right and the switch illuminates in green. Press the slide switch again and the switch returns to the left.

switch1

switch3

Here is a concept for a raised momentary push button. Pressing the button changes the appearance of the button while your finger is on the button – to look like the button is pressed in.

UI1

UI2

The Designer View

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App Inventor Tip Calculator version 5: Fully automated!

What the App Does

This is the fifth version of 5 app versions that implement a tip calculator – and the final version is pretty cool! This app is useful – I was recently traveling and used it on my smart phone to calculate restaurant tips – I will post a short tutorial on how to install this app on your phone.

  • Version 1 introduced the basic app and the use of error checking to handle user data entry mistakes.
  • Version 2 introduced the Slider user interface component to select the tip amount. Using the Slider, the user selects a tip from 0% to 30%. Since there is no text entry, it is not possible for an incorrect tip value to be entered.
  • Version 3 introduced an improved user interface to eliminate user data entry errors.
  • Version 4 introduces “procedures” to clean up the code in preparation for version 5.
  • Version 5 revises Version 4 to make the calculation of the tip fully automatic plus fixes some minor oddities.

In Version 5, we eliminate the “Calculate tip and total amount” button by making the calculation automatic. Each time we enter a digit or adjust the slider, the tip is calculated immediately. There is no need to press a button to do the calculation.  Just enter a bill amount and optionally adjust the slider to select a tip percentage.

The Tip Calculator User Interface

The new user interface eliminates the Calculate button and adds a single “Clear All” button as a quick way to reset the calculator. This sets the bill amount back to zero and the tip amount to 20%.

Here is a view of the app in operation – the bill amount of 23.45 has been entered on the keypad and the tip amount is 20%. The tip and total bill are shown at the bottom of the screen.

Each time any digit is entered – or the tip is adjusted – the tip and total is automatically calculated.

TipCalc5-Screenshot_2014-11-12-17-43-32

 

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App Inventor Tip Calculator version 3

What the App Does

This is a simple app to calculate the tip and total bill at a restaurant – or other service provider where a tip is common place.

This is the third of 5 apps that implement a tip calculator.

  • Version 1 introduced the basic app and the use of error checking to handle user data entry mistakes.
  • Version 2 introduced the Slider user interface component to select the tip amount. Using the Slider, the user selects a tip from 0% to 30%. Since there is no text entry, it is not possible for an incorrect tip value to be entered.
  • Version 3 shows how to re-design the user interface to eliminate user data entry errors. With the new user interface, only correct numeric values may be entered.
  • Version 4 introduces “procedures” to clean up the code in preparation for version 5.
  • Version 5 revises Version 4 to make the calculation of the tip fully automatic plus fixes some minor oddities.

(Note: I revised the order of new features to appear in Version 4 and Version 5!)

The Tip Calculator User Interface

Version 3 eliminates the text box for entering the amount of the bill for service. Why? A text box allows the user to enter any kind of data, not just numbers – which means the user can enter data values that are not numbers.

By changing the program to use a “numeric keypad” interface, only numeric digits may be entered – and we eliminate potential data entry errors.

You can see how this works in this screen capture showing a calculator like keypad for entering the amount of the bill:

TipCalculator3a-ScreenShot

 

To use, just touch the numbers on the keypad. (There are some minor user interface oddities in this version of the program that will be addressed in version 5 – play with the program and see if you can spot minor problems!)

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Tip Calculator App (version 2) for App Inventor

What the App Does

This is a simple app to calculate the tip and total bill at a restaurant – or other service provider where a tip is common place.

This is the second of 3 apps that implement a tip calculator.

  • Version 1 introduced the basic app and the use of error checking to handle user data entry mistakes.
  • Version 2 (this tutorial) introduces the Slider user interface component to select the tip amount. Using the Slider, the user selects a tip from 0% to 30%. Since there is no text entry, it is not possible for an incorrect tip value to be entered.
  • Version 3 will introduce a way to avoid all user data entry errors – by designing the app in such a way that the user can enter only correct values.

The Tip Calculator User Interface

In version 2, we eliminate the text box for tip percentage and replace it with a Slider component and we use a Label component to display the current setting of the Slider. A slider is something you drag with your finger, as shown in this screen shot:

Screenshot_2014-11-05-12-31-57

We set the tip amount by putting our finger on the “thumb” and dragging the thumb left or right. “Thumb” is the name given to the moveable control that appears on the slider.

As we drag the “thumb” control on the slider, the amount of the selected tip is shown – which is 20% in this screen shot.  Using this design with a Slider, it is impossible for someone to enter an invalid tip!

Continue reading Tip Calculator App (version 2) for App Inventor