App Inventor 2 Essentials

Transcription

1 App Inventor 2 Essentials A stepbystep introductory guide to mobile app development with App Inventor 2 Felicia Kamriani Krishnendu Roy f 1 open source I I community experience distilled PUBLISHING BIRMINGHAM MUMBA'I

2 Contractor purpose Preface v Chapter 1: Unleashing Creativity with MIT App Inventor 2 1 What is MIT App Inventor 2? 2 Understanding your role as a mobile app developer 3 Brainstorming app ideas 4 The Design Thinking process 4 Empathize 5 Define 6 Ideate 6 Prototype 7 Test 7 Computational thinking 8 Best practices to design apps 8 MIT App Inventor and potential 9 Discovering the possibilities of MIT App Inventor 10 MIT App Inventor examples 11 Stopwatch and Timer 11 Yahtzee 12 BYJ3S 12 Loops 13 Quartet 14 Brain Reaction Accelerator 14 ConstHelp Tools 15 UMATI 16 Ez School Bus Locator 17 Youth Radio 17 Rover 800 Remote 18 Summary 19

3 installing launch opening connecting testing Chapter 2: Setting Up MIT App Inventor 2 21 The initial setup 22 System requirements 22 Signing up a Google account 23 Logging in to MIT App Inventor 23 Connectivity setup 27 Downloading the AI2 Companion app 27 Connecting your computer and Android device with WiFi 29 Connecting the emulator or connecting using a USB cable 31 Step 1 the App Inventor setup software 31 Step 2 aistarter 41 Step 3 a project and connecting to the emulator 41 Step 4 setting up your device with a USB cable 43 Step 5 your computer and device (authenticating if necessary) 44 Step 6 the connection 45 Summary 45 Chapter 3: Navigating the App Inventor Platform 47 The projects view 48 Creating a new project 48 The Designer 49 Palette 50 Viewer 50 Components 50 Properties 51 Media 51 Creating a game app 51 Creating the Ul in designer 52 IDE 60 The Blocks editor 71 The Blocks drawer 72 Types of Blocks 73 Using Blocks to program Fling 73 Summary 92 Chapter 4: Fling App Part 2 93 Adding a scoring feature 95 Coding scoring blocks 95 Updating the score label 98 Increasing difficulty 100 Changing the game's dynamic 101 Creating levels 103

4 requesting receiving Updating the score label to display the level 108 Updating the Reset button 111 Updating the Play button 115 Summary 117 Chapter 5: Building an Event App 119 User Interface for an event app 120 Setting the background image 120 Adding an image component 124 Adding buttons 126 Adding the ActivityStarter 130 Adding screens 133 Programming the blocks 134 Navigating between screens and launching maps 134 Screen Sharing blocks between screens using the Backpack 135 Adding text to screens 138 Summary 139 Chapter 6: Introduction to Databases 141 Creating a database 142 Creating a Google Fusion Table 142 Designing the RSVP screen 149 Creating the GUI in the designer window 149 Setting up Google Authentication 153 Sharing the Fusion Table with the service account 159 Connecting the app to the Google Fusion Table 161 Our goal 161 Pushing data to the Fusion Table 163 Ensuring empty rows are not inserted 166 Viewing the guest list 168 Coding the blocks data 169 Coding the blocks data 169 Sharing the Event App 171 Summary 172 Chapter 7: Learning About Loops with a Raffle App 173 Creating the project and building the GUI 174 Creating a new project 174 Creating the User Interface (Ul) 175 Programming the behavior of the Digital Raffle app 179 Creating and initializing the variable and list 180

5 Receiving text messages from participants 182 Adding the phone numbers of all the participants to the list 185 Selecting a winner 187 Notifying the winner 189 Notifying everyone else 190 Using loops 193 Clearing out the list and variable 196 Summary 197 Chapter 8: Expanding Your Mobile App Development Skids 199 Design principles 199 Usercentered design 200 Visual hierarchy 200 Responsive design 201 Research app markets 202 Design tools 203 App Inventor extras 203 Shortcuts 204 Help 204 Titles 206 Images 207 Virtual screens 207 Backups 214 Distributing your app 215 The App Inventor Gallery 215 Viewing the Gallery apps 215 Sharing your app in the Gallery 216 Creating an AIA file 217 Downloading and sharing 218 Creating an APK 218 QRcode 219 Direct download (or sideloading) 220 The Google Play Store 220 Summary 222 Index 225