Android Apps with App Inventor: The Fast and Easy Way to Build Android Apps

by Jörg H. Kloss

Wi>Android Apps with App Inventor provides hands-on walkthroughs that cover every area of App Inventor development, including the Google and MIT versions of App Inventor. Kloss begins with the absolute basics of program structure, syntax, flow, and function, and then demonstrates simple ways to solve today’s most common mobile development problems. Along the way, you’ll build a dozen real Android apps, from games and geotrackers to navigation systems and news tickers. By the time you’re done, you’ll be comfortable implementing advanced apps and mashups integrating realtime multimedia data from all kinds of Web services with the communication and sensor-based features of your smartphone. Topics covered include This book will empower you to explore, experiment, build your skills and confidence, and start writing professional-quality Android apps—for yourself, and for everyone else! Companion files for this title can be found at informit.com/title/9780321812704

600 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2012

Reviews

[Ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Cato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't figure out another way to describe what programming with App Inventor looks like, but this parody of the old adage: An image is worth a thousand lines of code.

For a veteran (aka old) programmer, whom started programming during the dark times of the punched cards, App Inventor is some kind of magic. By that times, I learned to draw flow charts of any algorithm and then convert it to a program writing a lot of lines of code taking care of very strict syntax rules. Now, I'm astonished to find out that in App Inventor you just draw something very similar to this flow chart and run you application.

Even though I've been using modern programming languages for a while, I've not even imagined anything similar to the way you develop a powerful application with App Inventor. It's incredible how easy you can interface with every function or sensors of your Android device.

Now let's give some credit to Mr. Kloss's "Android Apps with App Inventor". The book is very easy to understand. Takes you from the classic simple "Hello World" (actually Hello Android World) to very powerful applications such as an Android Car Assistant that can read aloud emails and/or SMS messages, and even auto answer them with predefined or dictated text and including your geo location gotten from the device GPS.

The examples on the book are very easy to understand, and you can choose from create yourself the application from scratch, following the detailed instructions, or download it from the book companion web site.

Sure I recommend App Inventor to everyone interested on learning how to develop Android applications... and recommend J�rg Kloss's book to everyone interested on learning App Inventor.