Monday, August 13, 2012

My First App

I just made a super-simple app for Android! It meows at you when you tap on the picture of the kitty. Amazing!

I am working on a quest chain in 3D GameLab that is teaching me how to design apps. We are using MIT's App Inventor. There were some technical challenges to overcome.

I found it important to follow the set up directions carefully. I had to search around my computer to make sure that Java was enabled. I couldn't get it to connect to my phone, so I used the emulator option instead.

If you want to see my super-amazing-totally-awesome HelloPurrKT app, use a barcode reader to scan the blue QR code at the end of this post

My Second App

In our second quest, we did a tutorial to create a PaintPot app: tapping and dragging on the screen lets the user color on an image. This time, I was able to connect my phone, so I could download the app directly to my phone. And it worked!

Picture of me holding my phone with PaintPot app on it

I went beyond the tutorial a bit, because I noticed that I could upload images for the buttons. I got these ones from Open Clip Art Library, my favorite place to get clip art in the public domain. The tutorial explained how to make buttons that would make the paint dots big or small. I used that to make lines big or small as well. I was very proud of figuring out how to do that.

In fact, the whole thing just makes me burst with pride. Even though it's just a little coloring app. I. MADE. IT. I'm sure the experience of making it is better than the app itself, but you can try the red QR code to download this one.

I would be very interested to hear if anyone was able to get one of these apps to work on their Android device.

Update 8/22/12: I changed where I was hosting the app files and posted new QR codes. These ones seem to work.
Download HelloPurrKT for Android Download PaintPotKT for Android