Android software development: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:00, 17 September 2011

Revision as of 10:03, 16 October 2011

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{{Main|Google App Inventor}}

On 12 July 2010 Google announced the availability of App Inventor for Android, a Web-based visual development environment for novice programmers, based on MIT's Open Blocks Java library and providing access to Android devices' GPS, accelerometer and orientation data, phone functions, text messaging, speech-to-text conversion, contact data, persistent storage, and Web services, initially including Amazon and Twitter.<ref>{{cite news |last=Claburn |first=Thomas |title=Google App Inventor Simplifies Android Programming |url=http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/mobile/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225702880&subSection=News |accessdate=2010-07-12 |newspaper=Information Week |date=2010-07-12}}</ref> "We could only have done this because Android’s architecture is so open," said the project director, MIT's [[Hal Abelson]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Lohr |first=Steve |title=Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/technology/12google.html?src=busln |accessdate=2010-07-12 |newspaper=New York Times |date=2010-07-11}}</ref> Under development for over a year,<ref>{{cite news |last=Abelson |first=Hal |title=App Inventor for Android|url=http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/07/app-inventor-for-android.html |accessdate=2010-07-12 |newspaper=Google Research Blog |date=2009-07-31}}</ref> the block-editing tool has been taught to non-majors in computer science at Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, and the University of San Francisco, where Professor David Wolber developed an introductory computer science course and tutorial book for non-computer science students based on App Inventor for Android.<ref>{{cite news |last=Kim|first=Ryan |title=Google brings app-making to the masses |url=http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-12-11/business/17220628_1_computer-science-smart-phone-android |accessdate=2010-07-12 |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |date=2009-12-11}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Wolber |first=David |title=AppInventor.org |url=http://www.appinventor.org/ |accessdate=2010-07-12}}</ref>

===HyperNext Android Creator===

{{Main|HyperNext}}

HyperNext Android Creator (HAC) is a software development system aimed at beginner programmers that can help them create their own Android apps without knowing Java and the Android SDK. It is based on [[HyperCard]] that treated software as a stack of cards with only one card being visible at any one time and so is well suited to mobile phone applications that have only one window visible at a time. HyperNext Android Creator's main programming language is simply called [[HyperNext]] and is loosely based on Hypercard's [[HyperTalk]] language. HyperNext is an interpreted English-like language and has many features that allow creation of Android applications. It supports a growing subset of the Android SDK including its own versions of the GUI control types and automatically runs its own background service so apps can continue to run and process information while in the background.

===The Simple project===