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

Using App Inventor's web interface


The part of Google App Inventor on the web, again it's called Designer, consists of only two pages: My Projects and Design.

As we learned in Chapter 1, Obtaining and Installing Google App Inventor, one gets to Designer by browsing to http://appinventor.googlelabs.com and, if not already on, logging in using our Google account. You will wind up either at the My Projects page as shown in the following screenshot or (if you already have a project in progress) in Design. Left-clicking on the name of a project opens it for editing.

One important concept here: App Inventor Designer may look like just a couple of web pages, but it's really a quite powerful web application. Keep in mind that you are running a program, not browsing a website, and that Google keeps your data (the designs and the blocks we'll click together later) backed up out there in the cloud (those zillions of servers they have all over the place).

But, "whoa, dude", you say. "Don't throw around...