1. Week 3: Android App Programming Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate Professor Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year (Alabama, 2008) University of Alabama Department of Computer Science gray@cs.ua.edu http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray

2. Today General intro Introduction to App Inventor Various Demos and Hands-on Exercises Lunch: Ms. Lynsey Dill Rest of week See end of slides Agenda for Week

3. Camp Introduction Liability forms Photos throughout the week Lunch each day – 11:30am-12:45pm  Today: Pizza lunch (Shelby 3438)  Tue-Thu: Lunch in the Freshens Food Court  Fri: Catered lunch Restrooms USB Stick Assumption  Java background

4. Camp rules Camp Rules  No cell phone usage in class except for emergencies  No headphones while instructor is speaking  No surfing the web or playing games during lectures  No food or drink are allowed in the lab  Pay attention during class exercises; do not jump ahead and let us know if you fall behind

5. Bleeding edge – may encounter various “issues” throughout the week; App Inventor barely a year old Sharing of various Android phones Much different than week 1 Focus is on motivating you to practice Java on fun exercises Developing your own creativity while implementing a customized app General Info

6. Why Smartphones?

7. Motivation: Teaching CS – 1980s style Typical example was text-based, trivial, and uninspiring

8. Motivation: New and Exciting Contexts Media Computation (Georgia Tech)  Programming in a more exciting context by manipulating images and sounds Robots  Lego NXT 2D/3D Animation Environments  Alice, Scratch, AgentSheets

9. Motivation: Newest Context Teen cell phone adoption at 84% March 3, 2011  Android marketshare (29%) passes Apple (27%)  Android sales soar 888% Social networking and crowd sourcing a daily activity Increasing adoption of smartphones in science and medical applications

10. Android Overview

11. Brief History 2005  Google acquires startup Android Inc. to start Android platform  Work on Dalvik VM begins 2007  Open Handset Alliance announced  Early look at SDK 2008  Google sponsors 1 st Android Developer Challenge  T-Mobile G1 announced  SDK 1.0 released  Android released open source (Apache License)  Android Dev Phone 1 released

12. Brief History cont. 2009  SDK 1.5 (Cupcake) new soft keyboard with an "Autocomplete" feature  SDK 1.6 (Donut)  SDK 2.0/2.0.1/2.1 (Eclair) Exchange support; refine UI  Android runs on 3.5% of all smartphones Gartner Inc. predicts 14% in 2012 2010  Nexus One released to the public  SDK 2.2 (Froyo) wifi tethering, Flash  SDK 2.3 (Gingerbread) refine UI; improve keyboard copy/paste  Q4 Android passes Symbia as best-selling smartphone platform 2011  SDK 3.0 (Honeycomb) Table only release; Motorola Xoom in 2 weeks  Ice-cream Sandwich (mid-2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

13. Android Facts From Wikipedia  Modified version of Linux kernel  Android is composed of 12 millions lines of code 3M SLOCs pertaining to XML 2.8M SLOCS in C 2.1M SLOCS in Java 1.75M SLOCS in C++  Linux kernel tensions  Oracle lawsuit

14. Android Developer Challenge http://code.google.com/android/adc/ 2008:  10 teams received $275k  10 teams received $100k  Each of top 50 finalists received $25k 2009  10 first prizes at $100k  10 2 nd prizes at $50k  10 3 rd prizes at 25k  Overall: 1 st -$250k, 2 nd - $50k, 3 rd - $25k

15. Open Handset Alliance Established November 2007 Competes against Microsoft, Apple, Nokia (Symbia), Palm, RIM, and Samsung (Bada) Composed of 79 software and hardware companies URLs:  http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance

16. Key Differences: Android vs. iPhone iPhone OS is proprietary OS runs on iPhone or iPod Touches only Apps written in Objective- C Apple must approve all apps  Application Store Some apps are more important than others (Safari is your browser) Android OS is open source OS can be licensed for any mobile device Apps written in Java No approval process for apps  Android Market All apps considered equal (choose your browser)

17. What is Google Android? A software stack for mobile devices that includes  An operating system  Middleware  Key Applications Uses Linux to provide core system services  Security  Memory management  Process management  Power management  Hardware drivers

18. App Inventor Overview

19. URL: http://appinventor.googlelabs.comhttp://appinventor.googlelabs.com Purpose  Teaching  Prototyping Components of App Inventor  Designer GUI builder  Block Editor Provide behavior behind the GUI Based on MIT OpenBlocks and Scratch

20. App Inventor Overview

21. Installing and Running http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup /index.html#setupComputer  Requires Java 1.6  Install App Inventor setup App Inventor environment loads in a web browser  Login using Google account Run from a phone or the Android emulator Stores programs in the cloud

22. Designer Provides a WYSIWYG editor for designing the visual parts of the app Also provides ability to attach non-visual components

23. Blocks Editor Provides an ability to give behavior to an app; the programming part Typical and expected basic predefined constructs (logic, conditionals, iteration) Ability to refer to the components and their properties from the Designer Very similar to Scratch  Built on Open Blocks library from MIT

24. Limitations File I/O Custom objects Printing your code! Reliability

25. Examples Many tutorials available:  Developed by Dave Wolber (Univ. San Francisco)  http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/tutorials/index.html Standard Google Kitty app (embarrassing!)  http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurr emulatorpart1.html http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurr emulatorpart1.html Other Examples  Where’s My Car, No Text While Driving

26. Schedule Monday  Intro to App Inventor  Think about an app idea Tuesday  More on App Inventor  Java-based intro to writing Android Apps  Prepare project presentation (3 minutes each) Wednesday  Start at 8:30am  Project proposal presentation  More Java-based Android  Start project implementation

27. Schedule Thursday  Project implementation  Late Afternoon: CS AP GridWorld Mr. Martin and Mrs. Woessner Friday  Project wrap-up and final presentations  Lunch  Say good-byes