Building android apps with MIT App Inventor

Considering we were to buy a new smart phone, we quickly go through the usual set of prerequisite features such as camera quality, power backup and so on and so forth. What stands prior in this list in today’s tremendously digitalized world are the available applications (shortened and abbreviated as apps). Today, human kind has become largely dependent on their smart phones and majorly the apps that their smart phones carry. We need an app for everything: buying essential grocery, ordering delicious cooked food, booking much needed transport to work, scanning the important documents to be sent overseas to a client. You name a task and we are ready with a valid need for an app that helps us execute it in a way that is much simpler and easy to do as compared to the traditional methods of doing those otherwise so mundane tasks.

With the growing need for apps, genuinely there has to be something called developing of apps so that the demand is satisfied. The well-tailored engineers and developers of the present day are burning the midnight oil and trying to come up with user friendly and user interactive apps every other day. The top notch companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook are keen on hiring the tech savvies who can inter mix their knowledge with creativity to build great apps that promise a flamboyant user experience.

In progress with this, Google originally provided a web application integrated development environment called App Inventor that is currently being managed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and hence is popularly known as MIT App Inventor. This platform provides the opportunity to the newcomers in the field of computer programming to build and develop software applications (commonly abbreviated as apps) for two popular operating systems (OSs): Android and iOS.

Talking about the initial release of the web application takes us back to December 15, 2010 when Google came up with the idea almost 10 years ago. The web app was however, stably released on 26th November, 2019 after a thorough Beta testing. The most remarkable thing about this initiative is that it is free and open source software. It has been released under dual licensing: a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unreported License and an Alpha License 2.0 for the source code. The App inventor makes use of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) which is found to be very similar to the trending easy to learn programming languages like Scratch and the Star Logo. These languages make it relatively easier for the beginners just embarking on their journey in the field of programming by allowing the users to drag and drop visual objects. These visual objects are then used to create an application which is capable of running successfully on various android devices.

The objective with which a renowned company like Google introduced App Inventor is that programming can be a vehicle for engaging powerful ideas through active learning. To start using App Inventor, one has to access it through the web browser and then log in to it using a Google account (which can either be the Gmail account or the school email tied to Google). Thereafter, the following necessary steps need to be followed to efficiently develop and launch the app:-

1. Setup

For being able to run the app, we need to set up a phone or tablet for the purpose of live testing. In case of unavailability of a phone or tablet, it is suggested to go ahead with an emulator. An emulator is a software application that acts as a virtual device and imitates the features of an android device into the PC. It also allows the user to install Android apps on the computer or laptop and use them natively. The main purpose of emulator however, remains in its prominent use in debugging.

2. Designer and Blocks Editor Overview

The next very important step is to take an overview of the web application of App Inventor. The App Inventor Designer is used to design the user interface (UI) of the app. This mainly involves the arrangement of both on and off screen components. On the designer window, the mentionable features present are:-

a. Palette

The Palette consists of components that can be dragged to the Viewer and then can be added to the app.

b. Designer Button

This button is used to go to the Designer tab from anywhere in the entire working window.

c. Viewer

This is the initially blank area where to components can be picked up and dragged from the Palette to have a view that how exactly the app is going to look like.

d. Properties

As the name suggests, clicking on this button takes the user to the properties of the selected component. The component whose properties are to amended can be selected from the Components List and its properties like color, size, behavior, etc. can be altered.

The App Inventor Blocks Editor has the main function to program the behavior of the app by putting blocks together. The prime features present on this window are as follows:-

a. Built-in Drawers

They contain the blocks that behave generally and user might want to add the, to their app. The selected block is dragged and dropped to the Blocks viewer.

b. Blocks button

This button is used to go to the Blocks tab from literally anywhere in the working window.

c. Block

Blocks are the entities that are set together one after the other to set the behavior of the app.

d. Viewer

The blocks from the Drawers can be dragged and dropped to Viewer in order to build the relationships and behavior of the app.

3. Beginner Tutorials

The two obligatory things needed to start developing apps with the help of App Inventor are: a PC/Laptop (Mac or Windows OS) and a stable internet connection. For the newcomers, App Inventor has four beginner tutorials which if sincerely followed will give the learner an idea as to how to begin developing an app with the expected features.

4. Packaging and Sharing apps

Once a user has built the app successfully, they can share the app in an executable form (.apk). This form is installable on any device and henceforth can be run then on. For wide distribution of the app, some popular websites can be used.

All in all, App Inventor is an icing on the cake for the developers who are keen to step into the world of app development.

Web developer and digital marketing specialist. Currently works at https://saswath.academy