Even with a visual interface, devising complex applications is not trivial.īut just as you don’t need to create pivot tables in order to get value from Excel, you don’t need to be creating, say, a full-fledged fantasy football app in order to use App Inventor. Now, let’s be clear: Drag-and-drop programming will not turn an average user into an expert coder. I also walked through a number of the available tutorials. I ran the browser-based tool on both Mac OS X and Windows 7.
I received access to the beta a couple of weeks ago and tested many of the available programming functions, using both the built-in Android device emulator and a loaner Droid X smartphone. The tool, still in invitation-only beta, offers a graphical drag-and-drop programming interface instead of requiring that apps be written in Java. Google’s new App Inventor for Android comes with an ambitious goal: Allow anyone to create simple apps for their mobile phone.
