Friday, March 23, 2012

Blog 2 - First App

- Picture of the Interface


- Picture of the Code 


- Picture of the emulator



1) What kind of functions/commands did you learn how to do? 
I learned how to play a sound by using the press of a button. The program uses an if/when statement to determine whether or not to play the sound. If the button is pressed/clicked, the program enters the if statement and plays the sound. If the button is not clicked/pressed, the program doesn't enter the if statement and no sound is played.

2) How hard was it compared to what you expected? 
I thought it was about the difficulty i expected which was pretty easy. I found the coding part to be incredibly easy but the interface was a little difficult because I couldn't format everything the way I wanted to.

3) Did you run into any difficulties? What were they?
Yes I ran into two difficulties. The first one was formatting the screen properly which I still can't do. It doesn't affect the program or the app too much but it just doesn't allow the app to look nice. The second difficulty was getting my app onto the emulator, I couldn't figure out how to connect the app so I had to search google to fix that problem. 



4) How long did it take for you to complete the App?
It took me 10 mins to watch a video teaching me how to do basic things in app inventor, then about 10 mins total to finish the app. But it took me about 15 mins to figure out how to get the app onto the emulator.

5) Any other notes about what you learned or how your impression of App Inventor is changing
At first I thought that app inventor would be great but I don't like the way I can't format the screen the way I want. I'm sure there must be some way to do it but I can't find it so it's a bit annoying.

Blog 1 - First Impressions

What were your first impressions of App Inventor? 
I found the App Inventor interface to be really easy to follow and understand. The blocks editor also looked really simple, very much like scratch where the entire program was dragged and dropped into puzzle pieces. I found the App Inventor to be really slow. When opening up the blocks editor, it would take about a minute and when opening up the emulator, it would take 2-3 minutes which is quite a long time for opening a small program.

Explain what App Inventor is, how easy or hard it is to learn, and what kinds of things you expect you can do with it. 
App Inventor is a program which allows anyone (non-professional programmers) to create apps for the android phones. This is done by first creating a screen or interface where the user can interact and where the creator makes the design of the app. Then a blocks editor is opened to create the program behind the app and finally the app is connected to the phone where it can be tested/used. With app inventor, almost any basic app as well as some advanced apps can be created easily.

I think that app inventor is very simple to learn. Its all about dragging things to create an image and dragging "blocks" to create the code. I expect to be able to make simple games (such as pac-man & mazes)  and other simple programs (such as modifying pictures).

Useful Links
http://appinventor.mit.edu/
- gives basic information and explains the concept behind app inventor
http://www.appinventor.org/
- gives ideas on apps that can be created with app inventor
http://appinventorblog.com/
- blog explaining useful things about app inventor such as its pro's and con's compared to scratch and links to other useful websites for learning about app inventor