Visual Programming? (and FRIDAY!) App Inventor! http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/about/moreinfo/

Open source now! (moved from Google to MIT)

We can already this…

The reason it is challenging (or not?!) In general… I/O is not through the keyboard Need to get a file and “play” the sound… Event driven! User does something We respond, not “sequential”!

How do we handle this? Make it so that there CANNOT be errors! No missing semi colons No missing parameters COLOURS!!! VISUAL! New constructs?! When/do (green) Call (purple)

Accessing device features…

It won’t work if it is not right! Can’t miss the parameter! Can’t give it a negative value Don’t need a semi-colon! Didn’t in coffee script?! Dart?! Another example… Magic 8 ball!

Setting up the screen…

Prediction code!

Setting variables and Making a list Set is blue! List… A little like an array! No index… or not that we see? Pick random!

Using the Accelerometer… Shaking!

Speak? Challenge 1: Make the Magic 8-Ball Speak Instead of (or in addition to) making the prediction appear as text, can you make the 8-Ball speak it aloud? Hint: the text-to-speech component is under the Other Stuff palette in the Designer. Note: Most Android devices have the text-to-speech (TTS) capability, but if you have trouble getting the TTS component in App Inventor to work, you may need to find out how to install TTS and/or enable TTS on your device.

Pong

Starting…

Game over?

Keeping score!

Adding this in…

What is this one?

Can do serious stuff! University of San Francisco Local database Accessing sensors Full emulator

The big “idea” To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a professional developer. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app's behavior.

Tutorials… No Text While Driving This tutorial demonstrates how an app can respond to text messages automatically. You'll build an app that sends back a response when a text message is received. The idea for the app came from University of San Franciso student Daniel Finnegan. No Text While Driving, Part 2 You know that texting while driving is dangerous, so you've created and installed the No Text While Driving app on your phone. Now, when you drive you open that app and let it auto-respond to incoming texts. But the jingle of the texts coming in is killing you with curiosity-- wouldn't it be great if you could hear the texts spoken aloud? With Part II of the tutorial, you'll extend the app so that it speaks out both the message and who sent it. And since you're making some changes anyway, you'll modify the auto-response so it reports your whereabouts in the reply: "Sorry, I'm driving and I'm at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue". Before completing this tutorial you should complete part I.

More Tutorials… Broadcast Hub In this tutorial, you'll write an app that automatically responds to texts messages and broadcasts texts messages it receives to a list of phone numbers.The app is inspired by FrontLineSMS, a tool that has been used in developing countries to monitor elections, broadcast weather changes, and in general connect people that don't have access to the web but do have phones and mobile connectivity.

More Tutorials… Stock Quotes This tutorial demonstrates how to use the Web component to make an app call a web service (Yahoo! Finance) with a simple application programmer interface (API).

No text while driving…

Design…

Two QUESTIONS FOR YOU!!! Pros/cons of visual programming? Find someone who is NOT in your group!  Do you think there is a future to this? How does it stack up against HTML/CSS/JavaScript? Rubric for marking your projects! Find someone ELSE who is NOT in your group! 90second presentation THIS Friday, demo Monday! Design, video, things that are missing… Implementation! HTML, CSS, JavaScript