In this chapter, we choose and use various components in designing our apps.
Components may be thought of as services. For example, basic components include buttons, labels, and checkboxes. Media components allow us to play sounds, show videos, and so forth. Social components let us interact with others by phone calls, e-mail, texting, Twitter, and so on.
Components are chosen and added to apps in the App Inventor Designer by dragging them from the Palette column and dropping them into the virtual phone screen in the Viewer column.
Note
The virtual phone screen in Designer is not WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), so starting Blocks Editor and having either an emulator or your phone connected is very useful in getting the design we really want.
We'll examine all of these component/services and see how they work, and why and when we would use them. And, most fun of all, we'll make some quick little apps as examples.
What we learn in this chapter:
Using Google...