Ottorino Bruni’s Mobile Blog

App Inventor is simple to use, but also very powerful. Apps you build can even store data created by users in a database, so you can create a make-a-quiz app in which the teachers can save questions in a quiz for their students to answer.

	Because App Inventor provides access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build apps that know where you are. You can build an app to help you remember where you parked your car, an app that shows the location of your friends or colleagues at a concert or conference, or your own custom tour app of your school, workplace, or a museum.
	You can write apps that use the phone features of an Android phone. You can write an app that periodically texts “missing you” to your loved ones, or an app “No Text While Driving” that responds to all texts automatically with “sorry, I’m driving and will contact you later”. You can even have the app read the incoming texts aloud to you (though this might lure you into responding).
	App Inventor provides a way for you to communicate with the web. If you know how to write web apps, you can use App Inventor to write Android apps that talk to your favorite web sites, such as Amazon and Twitter.

Android 2.1 is a minor platform release deployable to Android-powered handsets starting in January 2010. This release includes new API changes and bug fixes.

The sections below provide information about changes made to the application framework API provided by the Android 2.1 platform.

API level

The Android 2.1 platform delivers an updated version of the framework API. The Android 2.1 API is assigned an integer identifier — 7 — that is stored in the system itself. This identifier, called the “API Level”, allows the system to correctly determine whether an application is compatible with the system, prior to installing the application.

To use APIs introduced in Android 2.1 in your application, you need to set the proper value, “7″, in the attributes of the <uses-sdk> element in your application’s manifest.

For more information about how to use API Level, see the API Levels document.

API changes summary

The following is a summary of some notable changes to the framework APIs.

Live Wallpapers

The following additions provide APIs for you to develop animated wallpapers:

• New android.service.wallpaper package.
• New WallpaperInfo class.
• Updated WallpaperManager.

Telephony

• New SignalStrength class provides information about the device’s current network signal. This can be acquired from the new onSignalStrengthsChanged(SignalStrength) callback.
• New onDataConnectionStateChanged(int, int) callback.

Views

• New View methods isOpaque() and onDrawScrollBars(Canvas).
• New RemoteViews methods addView(int, RemoteViews) and removeAllViews(int).
• New ViewGroup methods isChildrenDrawingOrderEnabled() and setChildrenDrawingOrderEnabled(boolean).

WebKit

• New WebStorage methods to manipulate web storage databases.
• New GeolocationPermissions methods to get Geolocation permissions from, and set them on the WebView.
• New WebSettings methods to manage settings for app cache, web storage, and zooming based on screen density.
• New WebChromeClient methods for handling video, browsing history, custom Views, app cache limits, and more.

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Android 2.0 is a major platform release deployable to Android-powered handsets starting in November 2009. The release includes new features for users and developers, as well as changes in the Android framework API.

For developers, the Android 2.0 platform is available as a downloadable component for the Android SDK. The downloadable platform includes a fully compliant Android library and system image, as well as a set of emulator skins, sample applications, and more. The downloadable platform is fully compliant and includes no external libraries.

To get started developing or testing against the Android 2.0 platform, use the Android SDK and AVD Manager tool to download the platform into your Android 1.6 or later SDK. For more information, see Adding SDK Components.

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Android 1.6, which is based on the donut branch from the Android Open Source Project, introduces a number of new features and technologies. With support for CDMA and additional screen sizes, your apps can be deployed on even more mobile networks and devices. You will have access to new technologies, including framework-level support for additional screen resolutions, like QVGA and WVGA, new telephony APIs to support CDMA, gesture APIs, a text-to-speech engine, and the ability to integrate with Quick Search Box. What’s new in Android 1.6 provides a more complete overview of this platform update.

The Android 1.6 SDK requires a new version of Android Development Tools (ADT). The SDK also includes a new tool that enables you to download updates and additional components, such as new add-ons or platforms.

You can expect to see devices running Android 1.6 as early as October. As with previous platform updates, applications written for older versions of Android will continue to run on devices with Android 1.6. Please test your existing apps on the Android 1.6 SDK to make sure they run as expected.

Programming Made Simple

In the 90s, a big company from up north was extremely successful with a dialect of the programming language BASIC (acronym for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). One of the reasons it was so successful was that the language was easy to learn and use.

Bringing an easy to learn and use language to the mobile world and the Android platform is the goal of the Simple project. Simple is a BASIC dialect for developing Android applications. It is particularly well suited for non-professional programmers (but not limited to). Simple allows programmers to quickly write Android applications by using the components supplied by its runtime system.

For a definition of the Simple language see the Simple Language Definition (download, 199 KB PDF). For more information on writing Simple applications see the open source project page at code.google.com/p/simple.