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Use Projects | Checkpoint to save a “Snap shot” of your App Inventor project

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Tip – Using Projects | Checkpoint

As we develop our app code, we occassionally make changes that do not work. Sometimes our programming breaks a working app! When that occurs, we wish we had saved an copy of the file so that we can return to the original code before we messed it up.

There are several ways to save a copy:

Continue reading Use Projects | Checkpoint to save a “Snap shot” of your App Inventor project →

General, Tips, Uncategorized

Saving your App Inventor projects to your computer

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Back up your App Inventor projects by saving them to your computer’s hard drive.

To save a copy of an individual App Inventor project, open the project and select Projects | Export selected project (.aia) to my computer.

ExportSelected

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App Inventor News, General, Uncategorized

App Inventor Tutorial ebook now also available from Nook Books + others

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You can support this tutorial effort by purchasing a copy of the e-book from any of the following e-book vendors – thank you for your help!

Sorry for the “spam” – this is to update the earlier post with the news that the ebook is now available from Nook Press. It took longer than expected for that version of the book to go live.

Just USD $2.99! Instant e-book delivery!

Available from

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Components, Programming Method, Uncategorized

Changing an App Inventor button’s color continuously

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How to implement a button that continuously changes color, as demonstrated in this video example:

The Designer View

Create a simple user interface with two buttons – one to start the color change and the other to stop the color changes. In the button properties, set the button shape to “oval”.

ButtonChangeColors3-Designer

 

Drag a clock component into the Designer – the Clock will appear as a non-visible component at the bottom of the Viewer.

Blocks Code

Continue reading Changing an App Inventor button’s color continuously →

App Inventor News, Uncategorized

Blockly – a Javascript programming system inspired by App Inventor

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Blockly is intended for use by software developers (rather than children learning to code) to generate Javascript:

Blockly was influenced by App Inventor, which in turn was influenced by Scratch, which in turn was influenced by StarLogo. As a result, children who are familiar with one have no difficulty moving to another.

via Blockly — Google Developers.

Actually, it can output Javascript, Python and Dart programs too 🙂

 

App Inventor News, General, Uncategorized

App Inventor Tutorial e-book now available from Google Play Books, Apple Books, Amazon, Kobo and Nook Books

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My App Inventor 2: Tutorial e-book – the fast and easy way to create Android apps – is now available from Amazon, Google Play Books, Apple Books via iTunes, and Kobo! And its very inexpensive – less than USD $3.00! Less than a latte!

Read it anyway you want!

Read on the e-book on the Kindle or Amazon Fire, read on Kindle for Android free apps,  read on your PC or Mac, reading using the Google Play Books app on your phone or tablet, read on iPads or Mac OS X, or the Kobo reader software (all platforms!) 

Depending on the vendor, you may download a free sample!

Amazon

GooglePlayBooks

  Google Play Books

GooglePlayBooks

Apple Books via the iTunes Store: App Inventor 2 Tutorial – Edward Mitchell

AppleiBooksCover

Kobo Books

KoboBooks

Nook Books

NookIcon

Components, Programming Method, Uncategorized

Changing the color of a button (or other components) in App Inventor

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This tutorial covers the simple changing of the color of a button, while the app is running. You may also set a component’s color by changing the color properties on the Properties list in the Designer.

A second tutorial will show how to implement the continuously changing color demonstrated in the video example. That will be posted next!

The Designer View

To demonstrate the “simple” version, create an app with this user interface:

ButtonChangeColor-Designer

That’s simple!

Each time the button is pressed, the color of the button will change.

Blocks Code

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General, Uncategorized

Minor change to the appinventor.pevest.com web site

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I have made a minor change to how posts now appear on this web site. Longer posts – especially the tutorial type posts – will show only their introductory text and images. Click on the “Continue reading–” link that appears below the post to read the full text.

By shortening the text that appears on the main page, page loads will be faster. Plus, more “short posts” can appear on the main page, making it easier to review recent content, quickly.

This change also creates a more accurate count of the posts that readers find interesting, helping to to identify the type of tutorials and content that readers want to see. Previously, full length posts, read on the main page, were not counted on the popular posts list.

Within about 2 months of starting to ramp up content on this web site, we are now seeing about 200 unique visitors each day, many arriving after searching for “how to” information using Google or other web search.

Please share these posts with your friends, using the easy social media sharing buttons that appear at the bottom of every post. Like us on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter or follow the RSS feed. Thanks!