WC2011 Programming Mobile Devices Android Development Day 2

Impressions so far?

So What is AppInventor Good For?  Intro to programming concepts  Logical design/critical thinking  Intro to Object concepts, event handling and other common areas of difficulty  Intro to Mobile App development  Starting point on a migration through a whole class in App Development  Summer Camps for HS students  Other?

Next Topic : User Response  So let’s talk about Quizzing  A very Simple Quiz app (1 question)  How could we improve this?

Local Storage  “In-App” Storage  We can use Lists for this and they can be static or dynamic  Quiz with a Static List (QuizMe Tutorial)  Assignment – Use this tutorial to make a quiz of your own….

Persistent Storage  On The Phone using TinyDB  Persistent on your phone and tied to App  Can be cleared on phone  Won’t be “persistent” while testing in emulator once you close the emulator  “In the Cloud” using TinyWebDB  Stored in a cloud DB using web services  By default, the TinyWebDB component stores data on a test service provided by App Inventor, limited to 1000 entries  Can create your own web service as well on the appspot.com server provided by Google

Lets look at a complicated Quiz app  Actually a set of apps  MakeQuiz and TakeQuiz  In the AppInventor Tutorials

Using Communication Tools  Let’s look at a couple of texting applications  TextGroup Tutorial  Uses a static list  TextGroup2 Tutorial  Source available on Wiki  How do I get it and load it?  Uses local persistent storage (i.e. TinyDB)  Assignment – How could you maintain multiple groups? Try it!

Automatic Responses  Detect when a text message comes in and send an automatic response  Like your autoresponder  No Text While Driving Tutorial  Source on Wiki  Try a variation like  Custom responses for particular phone numbers  Custom responses based on location  Variations on a theme…  No Texting While Driving 2  Reads the message to you so you don’t miss anything  Also on Wiki

Location Services  Where’s my Car?  Source on Wiki  Uses location services to record a “remembered” spot and then help you get from current location to remembered spot.  Uses map services as well  Assignment variations  Breadcrumb app that logs all location changes and can show route on map  Hike/Walk/Jog tracker that shows legs of a journey with approx distances and total distance 1 deg of latitude is approx miles or km 1 deg of longitude is x Cos (current lat)

Free Play  Have an idea for an App you would like to try?  Want to catch up on some of the variations from earlier?  Have Questions?  Let’s use the rest of today to catch up on these things….