Book Image

Google App Inventor

By : Ralph Roberts
Book Image

Google App Inventor

By: Ralph Roberts

Overview of this book

<center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UgRhYG_bvW8" width="500" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe></center> <p>The number of mobile apps has grown exponentially in the last two years. If you want to join the crowd, Google’s App Inventor is the easiest and best tool for you to get started with. It is a tool to create Android phone apps and uses a graphical user interface, and drag and drop methods to create apps. It’s so simple that anyone can build an app.<br /><br />Learn how Google App Inventor eliminates the mystery around programming. It is a visual language, where we simply drag and drop blocks (graphic elements representing blocks of code) in various combinations to give us applications that run on our phones or other Android-based devices. No programming background is required. Playing with blocks has never been more fun!<br /><br />The emphasis is on creating apps that work and that you understand fully. The first part of the book gives you a sound foundation in the basics, and lots of tips on how to use App Inventor. The second part is all about creating complete apps ready for real world use. The book includes apps that communicate, use databases to remember, surf the Web and other networks, use GPS and various sensors on your phone, and let you write or play games.</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Google App Inventor
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Setting up and running the emulator


To do a quick review, App Inventor has three parts:

On the web: App Inventor Designer, the part that we access via our various Google accounts.

On our local computer: App Inventor Blocks Editor (downloaded from Designer by clicking on the Open Blocks Editor button), USB drivers for our devices (how to get and install those coming next), and emulator software (which we just installed as part of the App Inventor software).

A test device: That can either be the emulator on your computer or an Android phone, connected via an USB cable.

Note

In my opinion, the ideal test device is a phone because that's mostly what we'll be developing apps for in this book. In my case, I use my Droid 2.

However, the emulator—software running on our local computer that gives us a virtual Android device to use for testing—is the first we'll look at. In fact, utilizing this virtual device, you can develop apps without even owning a phone.