Tag Archives: android

App Inventor News, Components

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

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)

Documentation, General, Products, STEM Education

App Inventor 2 Tutorial Volume 2 is now available at Amazon

Volume 2 of the App Inventor 2 Tutorial is now available at Amazon as an e-book via this link: App Inventor 2 Tutorial Volume 2: Step-by-step: Advanced features including TinyDB.  The e-book will also be available from Google Play shortly.

Description

MIT App Inventor 2 is a fast and simple way to create custom Android apps for smart phones or tablets. Volume 2 in the series introduces debugging methods, explains additional controls not covered in Volume 1, introduces “agile” methods for developing a real world app, and provides sample code for using the TinyDB database.

The App Inventor 2 Tutorial series is targeted at adult learners (high school and up). App Inventor 2 provides a simplified “drag and drop” interface to layout your app’s screen design. Then implement the app’s behavior with “drag and drop” programming blocks to quickly assemble a program in a graphical interface.

Volume 1 of this series covered the basics of the App Inventor user interface Designer and the Blocks programming editor, plus basic “blocks” programming concepts and tools for arithmetic, text processing, event handling, lists and other features. Volume 2 builds upon Volume 1 to provide tips on debugging programs when the apps work incorrectly, how to use hidden editing features, and how to install your own apps on to your phone or tablet for general use. Code samples are provided for using the Notifier component for general use or for debugging, for user interface control tricks such as buttons that change color continuously or implementing the missing “radio buttons” component, using ListPicker and Spinner for list selections, and using the WebViewer to display web pages in your app. The book includes a large section on designing and building a sample real world application and finishes with a chapter on using the TinyDB database.

For readers of the blog, Chapters 4–8 are based on the tutorial already presented here. Chapter 2 and Chapter 9 on TinyDB are all new material.

Chapters

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 – App Inventor Tips
  • Chapter 2 – Debugging App Inventor Programs
  • Chapter 3 – User Interface Control Tricks
  • Chapter 4 – Designing and Building a Real World Application
  • Chapter 5 – Tip Calculator Version 2
  • Chapter 6 – Tip Calculator Version 3
  • Chapter 7 – Tip Calculator Version 4
  • Chapter 8 – Tip Calculator Version 5
  • Chapter 9 – Using the TinyDB database

(Volume 3 is now available – App Inventor 2 Databases and Files adds substantially more information on TinyDB, plus TinyWebDB and Fusion Tables and includes the full introduction to TinyDB).

AppInventor_Volume2Cover

App Inventor News, STEM Education

MIT App Inventor usage triples during 2014-2015 school year

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Source: MIT App Inventor usage for 2014-2015 Academic Year

As they point out, the cyclical ups and downs in usage suggest App Inventor is primarily used by students – with drop off in usage during school vacation periods.

That suggests an opportunity to expand usage of MIT App Inventor – by insuring that AI2 appeals to a wide audience of potential app developers and not just educational programs!

General

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Look for “SUBSCRIBE TO POSTS BY EMAIL” in the right column of this page, then enter your name and email address and click on Subscribe.

Check your email for a confirmation message and click on the link in the email to confirm your subscription. If you do not receive a confirmation email within a few minutes, check your Spam mail folder – and then check to make sure you entered your email address correctly!

I have only tested this feature with my own email address but hopefully it will work well for anyone who wishes to receive post alerts via email!

Facebook is a simple way to be alerted to updates, but you may also wish to use Twitter, our RSS newsfeed, or the new email subscription – or all of them! My intent is to make it simple for you to receive new posts in what ever way works best for you.

App Inventor News

App Inventor Classic (version 1) to Shut Down on July 15 

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Most users are already using AI 2 and are unaffected by this change. But if you are still using AI Classic (version 1), then this message is very important – please click through the link to read the full story!

May 24, 2015 — MIT App Inventor Classic will shut down on July 15, 2015. After July 15, 2015, you will not be able to access or edit your existing AI Classic projects. It will be impossible to create new AI Classic projects.This shutdown applies only to AI Classic (AI1). App Inventor 2 (AI2) will not be affected.

MIT will not automatically convert your AI1 projects to AI2 projects. But MIT will provide a conversion tool that will help you convert the AI projects that are important to you into AI2 projects. We expect to release this converter in about 2 weeks (i.e., around June 8).

Source: App Inventor Classic to Shut Down on July 15 | Explore MIT App Inventor

How do you know which version you are using?
Login to App Inventor and create or open a project. If the URL address in your browser begins with
http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/

then you are using Version 2.