2014년 12월 28일 일요일

"Add To Homescreen"

I gave a link to the university mail page with webviewer componant, but it doesnt save the username and password in this way.
Its almost similar with using the feature of Google Chrome: "add to homescreen". At least this method saves the username and password in next login.
So my question is, how can I use "add to homescreen" feature of google chrome, so that when users open the app first, they will be able to click on "add to homescreen" directly? Any idea?
Best regards,



Would that be covered by saving a URL into
TinyDB for use loading the WebViewer at
the next Screen1.Initialize?



Build error failed! Timeout while fetching using AI2U 64bit v2.3 local


Build error failed! Timeout while fetching using AI2U 64bit v2.3 local

I get the following error when I create the project .pak on local pc


someone can tell me the cause and how to fix it?

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google crome same problem perhaps is an error of java? I installed the version jkd jdk1.8.0_25

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The guys in the AI2U forum probably can help you     https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ai2u  
You got an AI2 Ultimate issue and that is the best place to seek help.

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thanks

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the problem was a service nvidia to use port 9990 the program used to find out who was using TCPView is downloaded from microsoft

I finished that service and now creates the .apk file without problems

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Using other languages for text to speech


Is it possible to get an app to use text to speech in languages other than the ones that are used by default on most Android devices? For example, is it possible to get an app to speak in Thai? I see that Google Text To Speech only has about 6 or 7 different languages so to get a device to speak in a language that isn't one of those, will a new speech synthesis have to be invented to get it to speak in that language or is there another way?

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At the moment, this is it:   Google Releases Huge Text-To-Speech (TTS) For Android Update v3.0  

There are third party TTS engines for Android.  The 7 Best Android Text-To-Speech Engines

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Thanks for your response.

The problem with using other apps for a solution to the languages that are not available is - the user would need to install the other app first to be able to get my app to work properly and the makers of these TTS apps probably wouldn't be too happy about someone making an app which requires their app to be installed first right?

I know Google wont care as they are a part of Android and have their TTS already installed on most new devices so using them is ideal but if only they could have an addon which could be installed to their TTS.

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Use Microsoft's Speech API instead.  They have recognizers in more languages  http://support.voiceelements.com/index.php?title=Using_Text_To_Speech_Voices_available_with_Microsoft_Speech_Platform Then, however, you must use it with a Window's application.

You might ask your questions in StackOverflow which has a forum dedicated to TTS.    Perhaps someone there can help you:  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3058919/text-to-speechtts-android

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You can now implement translation and have it spoken in the translated language. See description / blocks in my post HERE.

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Thanks for that Hossein .. the tool released May 18th is a nice addition to the AI2 toolbox .. Current the service offers translations in 42 languages: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

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Thanks guys, that looks really cool.

42 languages but unfortunately there is no Thai in that list, dam it. I will just have to wait and hope they add that one to the list soon I guess.

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My App Inventor 2 does not show an entry for YandexTranslator in its Palette (see attached https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw5McUt95YdeVEJoSm5MNjJvMmc/view?usp=sharing).
Is there a way to get YandexTranslator to show in my AI2’s Palette?


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@Ron, I replied to post you had made on my blog.
You are looking in the wrong category. Yandex is under Media category.

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Blocks Disapeard

Hello I was doing a mini golf app and the blocks went away randomly. Does any one know how to fix that?



Can you please define "randomly"?  For example, what were you doing when the disappeared?  Were you loading the project, switching screens, testing the app, using the blocks editor, etc.?  Also, by the "blocks disappeared", do you mean ALL the blocks in your project, all the blocks on one screen, just a chunk of blocks, etc.?


Making An Expenses App

I am just learning about App Inventor and I am wanting to create an expenses app. I have a screen which has a text box to input an income amount and a text box to input the income description. and then a button to add the amount and description to the tiny DB.

I also have a text box to input an outgoing amount and another text box to input the outgoing amounts description. I then have a button to add them to the tiny DB.

I am not sure how to make it so that all the incomes add up and then all the outgoings add up so that I can subtract the outgoings from the income to leave a final income amount..
Any help would be great..



Math Blocks.  Also It seems like you'll be making use of lists and loops.  
It might be simplest to store your outgoing amounts as negative numbers.  Then you're always adding the numbers and you don't have to track weather an amount is in or out. Keep a running total showing, and every time you get an amount (in+ or out-) just add that it to the running total.

I would keep each transaction as a list of attributes (amount, description, etc) within a master list. Then just save the list in a single tinyDB tag. Save it every time it gets a new item. Looping will come in when you open the app and get the existing transactions tag  from the tinyDB which returns your list of transactions. Use the 'for each item in list' block to loop through and calculate the current totals.

You're next challenge is managing your transaction list.  Editing items/removing items. Welcome to the fun! 



thanks for the reply greg but everything you mentioned is not making any sense as like i mentioned i am new to app inventor.. I dont know what blocks to add to make a list that increases everytime i add a description and amount..



Here is the way to learn about the App Inventor Blocks Simon ...and it can be fun.

Try the MITs tutorials to learn by doing:    http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/tutorials.html

Read the AI2 free online eBook   http://www.appinventor.org/book2 ... the links are at the bottom of the Web page.  It explains a lot in fairly plain English and lots of pictures.

Perhaps you would take a little time out from your Expense project and find out how the blocks work?

When you are ready to code expenses return and ask again; you will get specific help.



The block would be add items to list
For sure tho you're going to be deep into handling lists and that does take a little working up to.  Run through the tutorials as Steve suggests and keep your project in mind and pay special attention to the list blocks and how they are used as well as the TinyDB and math blocks.  You'll likely rethink the code for your expenses app a few times at least as you learn the techniques.

Are you just new to App inventor or new to programming in general.  AI is a great way to learn programming concepts.


ENTIRE PROJECT BLOCKS WIPED!

So I've been using App Inventor (because we have to in our software engineering class) and I was working on my final project.  Ever since last week (or atleast when the asset problems started appearing) I was getting constant pop ups saying "Blocks have been cleared, do you want to save?" and everytime I would say no because it would wipe my project, but out of nowhere, that seems to have happened.  It was my final project.  A lot of work was put into that.  And now it's all gone, and on top of that there are random broken images.

I didn't happen to save the project file, so now everything seems to be gone for good.  I'm sincerely hoping there's some way to restore it (or if there are backups) because I was pretty much finished with it and there was a lot of blocks involved.



Uh Oh, you may be in trouble.  No aia, you did not save a copy of the project.

Please do this, post the name of the project here; tell us what you were doing with the project the last time you had a good save of the project...did you add images, layouts,etc.  Did anything unusual happen?   Error messages.

Sometimes it is possible when files are lost.  Be aware, sometimes it is impossible.   Please post the information, return here to check on the status.  The MIT guy who sometimes is able to restore projects needs your project name.   He is currently extremely busy trying to find a fix for the Google Cloud issue that is affecting some users so if he does tries to find your files, it might take a while .   I sent him a note, but be patient, he is very busy and near the end of his normal work day.

You might have to re-code everything.  Sorry, no aia, it causes problems but perhaps this is your lucky day?



This sounds like a duplicate topic for the same problem elsewhere on the forum, and I think I may have found a quick-fix for it that will recover everything (it may not actually even need true 'recovering').  You might want to check my post near the bottom of this thread:


projet de fin d'étude sur (final project study)

hi my friends :)
I am a student doing a final project study is to make a library for AppInventor: /
y does it aid and suggested for this truc.c'est Urgent!
Thank you in advance :)



Unfortunately, the translation from French to English is not good.  Would you please ask your question again in a different way?



I have a final Project study which will be on App Inventor.
i want to options (or library fromwork)



unfortunately it's hard to understand what you are saying
do you want to work with the App Inventor sources?



Perhaps you need the library of components and the language?



There is a very good description of what can be done with App Inventor in the AI2 free online eBook   http://www.appinventor.org/book2 ... the links are at the bottom of the Web page.



Maybe he is trying to code an e-reader app with multiple books?
Try the Treasure Island tutorial.


Urgent help on disappearing blocks

I've worked on an application heping me to manage my money. Yet, when I tried to add stuff into it today, it showed up with a message telling all my blocks on screen2 were removed, which I have spend like more than a week working on most of the button mechanisms there. I really need this back so please help restore them... T.T



Simply use the aia file you have been saving to restore to the point you last saved the blocks to the aia.   You can also try logging out of AI2, then logging back in; the blocks might still be there.



 it showed up with a message telling all my blocks on screen2 were removed, 
if you get that message, you have 2 possibilities:
Yes, save the empty screen and No, Don't save

let me recommend you to click "No, don't save", then try again



I have this same issue.  I have over a month worth of coding in 4 screens interfacing with an API that suddenly disappeared.  I'm getting the same message that ALL blocks from ALL screens are empty.  I have clicked on the 'don't save' button about 20 times now, the UI refreshes and loads my app.  It then pops up with the same message for a different screen where all the blocks are removed and if i want to save.  I think its cycling through the same restore points where at least one screen has all the blocks empty and i don't know how to restore to a point before this.   

I'm assuming versions of the app are stored somewhere and can be restored to a specific point.  I'm hoping all my coding isn't lost.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Can't you restore from one of the AIA backup files you made along the way?  You've been working on the project for a month... You should have about 15-20 backup AIA files at least.  

Why don't you just use one of those, restore the project, and get back to work?



Good point, lesson learned - create AIA backups.  

I have not done any AIA saving.  I have just been building off of the  on-line version off of the MyProjects screen.



OK... this thread has been passed to the person that has the ability to get a project back, if possible.  Read the section in my tips on AIA files and how to make them...;)!



you need to tell us the name of your project as it appears in your Project list.



Okay, another thread seemed to have the same problem, so I'm just going to repost a quick fix I found that may apply to the problem in this one for those who don't get emails from the other thread.
"
Hey guys, if it's on very initial load of the project then I may be having the same problem.  Every time I open the project it immediately gives me the popup and asks me if I want to save an empty screen.  I pick no, wait 5 seconds, and then it reloads the page.  However, the popup just appears again and I get stuck in a loop of clicking "No, don't save" and reloading the page only to see the popup again.
BUT, if this is what's happening to you all, I found a quick-fix.  Load the project, and then as fast as you can (you have to act faster than the popup can appear), go to your Projects menu, go to "My Projects" and just open or create some other project.  Then go back to the project giving you the problem and the popup will no longer appear and your blocks should still be there.  I've had this happen 3 times and it has worked every time so far, but take note that it can take a few tries before you can be fast enough to complete the task before the popup appears.
Note:  so far this just seems to be a quick fix.  It doesn't seem to prevent the problem from happening again, so you'll just have to repeat this any time it happens.
"


Listpicker

Is there any limit in the number of columns that a table must have to be used as an elements list for listpicker?

I am downloading a spreadsheet that has 19 (nineteen) columns. For the matter of this number of rows is irrelevant but in my case there are only two.

When touched "Listpicker" to make a selection, the picking list only shows the first 10 (ten) columns, and next to them a string made of three points ". . .".

The problem is, that when SELECTION is done, it carries the elipsis (the three points) as data instead of the 9 columns not shown.

Is this behavior correct?.

If so, I will have to get around with adhoc programming.

I  will appreciate your answer and comments on this matter.



How do you load the csv into listpicker? Can you post screenshot of relevant blocks?



The ten column limit and ellipsis (...) suggests that you screen scraped
the data from the spreadsheet .

Like Hossein said, check the contents of the
csv file you (should have) exported from the spreadsheet.



Thanks for your help.

Yes I did, In response to your question about convert csv to list.

Also I check with the Do it option to see how the conversion is done and the information up to this point is OK.

These are screen captures of both AI2 blocks editor and Android tablet sceenshot..

Thank again for your interest and help



I have noticed that someone got this issue as solved. I do not agree on that. 

The screenshots attached in my previous message show that information is downloaded OK, converted from csv to list OK, but once the listpicker is touched and the list shown in the tablet (screenshot is included also) the elipsis is present.

My questions still is unanswered. Is there any known limit for the number of columns that can be shown in a listpicker chose list?.



I apologize for mis-reading your earlier post.

My eyes took the easy way out.

I had read it as saying that your ellipsis (...)
was a result of screen scraping to get your input,
and I read the long DoIt list as a result of
changing your input method.

Do you think this would warrant writing a little test 
app that extends a list of integers and displays
it in a list picker each time a button is pushed?
How high should it go before the limit is reached?
(Would it need +10 or +100 buttons to save time?)

I have reset the thread to incomplete.



As for the limit, I got past 600 before I ran out of patience.
See attached .aia test case.
I think it's your data.




Thank you Abraham for your comments and aia file.

I will check my data carefully. By the way, doing some testing with the downloading of spreadsheet using web REST Get commands, I saw something strange with my table. The very last cell (last column, last row) has a sum formula. In  Google Drive it shows the right amount. But in a certain download exercise this same position in the table show and "empty string" as value.

I will recheck on that also and share my finding here.

And as for the answer I looked for, I am now satisfied.


App Inventor apps failing to open

I know app inventor 2 has been having some issues lately with storing assets but this issue has been going on for a week now. I can't open any app inventor apps and i've tried on multiple devices and even with multiple apps but no new builds are working. I really need a fix for this as this is for my GCSE coursework and really need to open my app.



The issue that may be causing new apk's built since Dec 11 to not work properly might be this issue described on the AI2 splash screen:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wQy_1uCsZDAXY51wElbMyfy8AJid_EOqklIX_ggzBJY/pub

Are these ALL projects that were compiled on Dec 11 or after?    If not, the issue is something else, however if these apks were build recently the following probably is happening.

What happens is some files are not treated properly, the build fails, but does not let you know.  This happens usually with projects with moderate amounts of assets (images, files etc) stored in the Media.  If this is the problem, it looks as if a fix may be fairly immanent.  Watch the AI2 splash screen for additional information.  When the issue is fixed, there will be an announcement there on the splash screen.


activity starter email routine issue

when I call this activity to compile email it works if I select GMAIL but is blank if I select other email choice.

any clues?



yes, you have to choose Gmail for this to work
alternatives see here 



I got it to work. my replace text piece strategy was replacing the  & in....  &body=   I had to isolate this line.. for some reason Gmail would overlook this but my other email would not.

everything is right now.


Version nb139f Deployed. The 0-bytes images issue should now be repaired

MIT released a probable fix for the 0 bytes issue affecting assets at about 2:45 UTC Dec. 19 (Thursday evening EST).
If you have files that show as 0 bytes, you will have to delete them and reload your images or sound files, the run App Inventor.  This should be all you have to do to correct aia and apk files that are misbehaving.

See the announcement at the green field on the AI2 splash screen.

We thank everyone for their patience while this issue, that affected many users was resolved.

Thank you Jeff for your hard work and working with Google to get this issue resolved.


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Google Cloud Services has let us know that they've discovered the source of the storage layer problem that was affecting App Inventor between December 11 and December 18.  It had to do with an update to a piece of the infrastructure that they had just started rolling out.  We regret that some people have lost work, but at least we can be have some confidence that this particular failure has been resolved.  Even so, as always, it's best to maintain local backups of large projects whenever you can.
Information below this line documents the history of this incident. Feel free to ignore it.

NOTE: WE BELIEVE THE PROBLEMS ARE FIXED. However it is always a good idea to backup your projects and keep copies of your sounds, images, etc.
Summary: Beginning on December 11, we were having problems with storing “assets” (image, sounds and other objects that you upload to your projects) on the Google servers.  This made make it look like some images (or other assets) were missing when people loaded their. projects.   We worked with Google, and resolved those problems on December 18 by updating some of the libraries that App Inventor uses.
Although the problems are resolved, it is always a good idea to keep copies of your assets (images and music) on your local computer, in case similar problems should occur in the future.
Here is some information we published while the problems were occurring.  We’re keeping it here as a matter of general interest.
If we fail to read an asset when you load your project, we substitute a zero-length file. Be careful exporting your projects, as assets may be missing from the “.aia” file exported. Make sure you keep a local copy of your assets on your own computer.
We have been making modifications to the system to mitigate the worst of the problems. In particular we will never serve up a missing asset to the “buildserver” when you package an App. This ensure that if you successfully package an App, the resulting APK is valid. If we fail to read an asset, you will get a “Build Failed” message. If this happens, just keep trying the build. It may work the second or third time around. If it never seems to work, you can remove your assets from your project and upload them again. This may help.

UPDATES
UPDATE: December 18, 2014 21:00 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
Working with Google Engineers we were able to diagnose and solve the problems that were causing assets to not load properly. The system should be operating normally again.
UPDATE: December 17, 2014 21:15 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We have changed the way we are storing assets (images etc.) If you continue to have problems, re-upload your assets. They will then be stored in a different storage system at Google, one that appears to still be working. Once you do this, you should be able to use/build your projects normally.
UPDATE: December 16, 2014 18:50 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We are continuing to work with Google. The occurrence of errors in the logs are decreasing. So this problem is likely affecting fewer people.
UPDATE: December 14, 2014 21:30 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We have updated MIT App Inventor to ensure that if you package your App and the “build” succeeds, your resulting APK file (the packaged App) will be valid. If we have trouble fetching an asset during the build, the build will fail. If a build fails for you, try it several times. See the advice in the summary above for more information.
UPDATE: December 14, 2014 13:44 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We continue to work this issue. The error rate is currently modest. Things to keep in mind:
  • If you export your project to a .aia file assets may be zero length in it. Make sure you have copies of your assets.
  • If you build a project (package an APK file). Make sure all assets are in the APK file before you share it with others. We are investigating making a change in MIT App Inventor that will cause builds to FAIL unless all assets were successfully found, so you can trust generated APKs if the build succeeds. We’ll post an update here when we have such a check in place.
UPDATE: December 14, 2014 10:10 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
Our logs logs are still reporting errors in retrieving files from Google Cloud Storage.   We do not know the cause of the errors, and are working on the issue with Google Support.  Until this is fixed, you may find that some images have “vanished” when you go to work on your project.   It appears to us that these images are still on the App Inventor server, so simply switching away from the project and switching back might help.   But also, as you are working, be sure to keep copies of your images and other media on your local machine, so that you can upload them again if necessary.  
UPDATE: December 13, 2014 17:05 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We have deployed a new version of MIT App Inventor. This version has some more aggressive retry code to attempt to fetch assets that are giving us errors when we fetch them from the Cloud Store. It also has some additional logging that may help us get closer to the ultimate solution.
UPDATE: December 13, 2014 13:40 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We are aware that problems are continuing. Sometimes particular assets are unavailable (they show up as zero length) and then re-appear later. We are actively investigating the problem and apologize for the inconvenience.
UPDATE: December 11, 2014 23:15 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We have deployed the fix so that projects with a zero length asset should now behave properly.
UPDATE: December 11, 2014 14:00 US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
We have identified a bug in MIT App Inventor where if you upload a zero length asset (aka an empty file), your project will become corrupt. In particular you will not be able to build it, export it or checkpoint it. However you can continue to work with it.
We have a fix, which we anticipate deploying this evening. Once deployed, all projects affected by this bug will work normally again.
December 11, 2014 11:30AM US Eastern Time (UTC-5)
If you are having problems loading or exporting your projects (you see the “red bar” with an error message). This *may* be caused by a problem that appears to be in the Google Cloud Storage (which we use for storing projects). Some projects lost assets (images, sounds, etc.). When this happens the project becomes corrupt and won’t load.
Although we cannot recover any assets that were lost, we are working on a modification to App Inventor that will permit your project to load, even if assets were lost. You will have to re-upload the assets and then your project should be fine.
We apologize for this inconvenience. We will update the “splash screen” and this document when we have more information.
-The MIT App Inventor development team

how to set button to give focus to a specific textbox

Is there a way to give focus to a specific textbox in clicking a button ?



It's a little difficult with only one box but here's a project I did as a test that sets focus...

Focus.aia



Enis provided a clever work around for the problem that the TextBoxes do not have a set TextBox.Focus to true block.  Since there are no blocks to set a TextBox's property to Focused, hiding the textbox and then making it visible tricks the app into setting the focus to the correct text box.

NIce work around Enis!


Help with Phone Call

Hey guys, I'm back. I have a question regarding forward a phone call to a number. The  PBX number are as follows 0317126380,3,*71. 
After the PBX number, I want to add random phone number that the customer chooses.

How can I do this, can I use variables or something?



yes, of course

first do the tutorials http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/tutorials.htmlto learn the basics of App Inventor, then try something and follow the


App Inventor 3

When will App Inventor 3 come out?



App Inventor 3?     MIT plans to release the migration of App Inventor from using Google's Android API3 to Google's API 4 sometime in the first quarter of 2015.  Will this release be called AI 3?    Good guess, I do not believe even the MIT Development Team knows.

When API 4 is implemented, it will provide additional capabilities for App Inventor 2 developers to use sizing options for screens and or components.  In addition to Automatic, Fill Parent and sizing by specifying pixel size.  Using AI 4 will allow using Percentages as an additional sizing option.     How will percentages be used?  That is now being experimented with and tested.

Perhaps someone from the Development Team will tell us more.



Steve is correct that we're to update to API Level 4.  It's on our next list of priorities and Jeff and José are working on it now, but it will need a lot of testing before it can go into the release.
That will be an update to App Inventor 2.   We don't have anything in the works that we're calling "App inventor 3".


Full screen mode or remove title bar


How do i get a full screen or remove the gray title bar at the top of my app?

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Use AppToMarket: Automating conversion of App Inventor apk to Android Market


Search the forum, this question has been answered many times.


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thank you but is there another way?


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No, not at this time...


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you can use any tool, which can modify the manifest and is able to repackage the modified project

for example APK Studio, an example how to work with APK Studio see here https://puravidaapps.com/packagename.php

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We're working on that.   It should be released in the near future.

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how to use images as button in app inventor 2? plz help.

i want to know how to use images as button as show in this example. plz help me. i want to use this type of interface in my app.



drag and drop the button on the stage
now go to button properties on the right and you will the "image"
click "image" and add one.



Perhaps this:


You could use a Table Layout to arrange the 'buttons' as in your example image.

Merry Christmas,




thanks. its works



You are welcome ;)


i want to make phone battery level showing application any one help me???

i want to make phone battery level showing application any one help me???



Probably not possible with App Inventor 2 (there is no control for this); however you might be able to do something using the ActivityStarter or Android API.

Similar requests to measure battery level have been asked and the answers provided on the forum are here:  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mitappinventortest/battery$20level  


Did you find a solution?


Settings btn


how do I get access to the settings menu?
I mean when you touch the settings button on your phone in an app you see a menu.

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You can use ActivityStarter to get to the Settings Menus.  

Here is a GPS example:

Here are other settings you can try (not all will work with all Android operating systems):

android.settings.ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS,
android.settings.INTERNAL_STORAGE_SETTINGS,
android.settings.ADD_ACCOUNT_SETTINGS,
android.settings.AIRPLANE_MODE_SETTINGS,
android.settings.APN_SETTINGS,
android.settings.APPLICATION_DETAILS_SETTINGS,
android.settings.APPLICATION_DEVELOPMENT_SETTINGS,
android.settings.APPLICATION_SETTINGS, 
android.settings.BLUETOOTH_SETTINGS,
android.settings.CAPTIONING_SETTINGS,
android.settings.DATE_SETTINGS,
android.settings.DEVICE_INFO_SETTINGS,
android.settings.DISPLAY_SETTINGS,
android.settings.INPUT_METHOD_SETTINGS,
android.settings.LOCALE_SETTINGS,
android.settings.LOCATION_SOURCE_SETTINGS,
android.settings.MANAGE_ALL_APPLICATIONS_SETTINGS,
android.settings.MEMORY_CARD_SETTINGS,
android.settings.NETWORK_OPERATOR_SETTINGS,
android.settings.NFC_PAYMENT_SETTINGS,
android.settings.ACTION_PRINT_SETTINGS,
android.settings.PRIVACY_SETTINGS,
android.settings.QUICK_LAUNCH_SETTINGS,
android.search.action.SEARCH_SETTINGS,
android.settings.SECURITY_SETTINGS,
android.settings.SETTINGS,
android.settings.SOUND_SETTINGS,
android.settings.SYNC_SETTINGS,
android.settings.WIFI_IP_SETTINGS,
android.settings.WIFI_SETTINGS

--
Do you mean the settings for the phone?   If so, you don't get to that from within an app.  You get to it by using "settingd" from the home screen.

Or did you mean something else?

--
@Hal ... actually users can get to the Android Settings on the phone or tablet by using ActivityStarter to instantiate the Android screens from within an app.

--
At the bottom of a phone there are 3 keys...

key 1: bottom left: settings
key 2: bottom centre: home
key 3: bottom right: back

I can use "key 3"(the back key) no problem. I go to blocks click on screen and it is the 1st block called ".BackPressed".

how do I find the block for "key 1"(settings)? 

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You can only manipulate the "back" key using blocks with AI2.  There are no blocks for the settings.    If you want individual Settings menus, you use the ActivityStarter control as described above.

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I am not looking for phone settings.

just a menu that opens up setting for a normal app.

if I open the FaceBook app on my Samsung phone and click "key 1"(setting button bottom left of my phone) I can see that a menu of FaceBook setting comes up.

that's all I am trying to do.
Any help?

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OK, you want something that will set Configuration Settings for a particular App Inventor app?

There are many ways you could do this.

1) Make a 'Configuration' screen for your app where you set global values and save them to a TinyDB (so that they become persistent (the app will 'remember' them) so they are set when the app next runs.

2) Do the same thing on a single screen.   You put the setting controls (buttons, spinner, ListPicker or whatever Objects you use to 'set' the parameters) inside a Horizontal or Vertical Layout.   You then can 'hide' or 'show' the Configuration controls by setting the Layout visible true or false.when not in use.  You still need to save the data to unique TinyDB tags.

3) In the Screen1.Initialize event handler, put the TinyDB instructions necessary to read the TinyDB blocks there and the blocks to assign values to the global values necessary (or set the labels, components etc. to the correct state).  You do this so your 'saved' configuration can be loaded on running your app.

4)  You can do something similar by 'saving' settings to a csv file using the File control to read or write instead of using a TinyDB.

5) If you use a second screen, you have to 'pass' values between screens ...there are several ways to do that.

Is this what you really wanted to know?

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No that's not what I asked.

I will explain again with an image I attached to this post to make it even easier to understand.


At the bottom of a phone there are 3 keys...

key 1: bottom left: settings
key 2: bottom centre: home
key 3: bottom right: back



I can communicate with "key 3"(the back key) no problem. I go to blocks click on screen and it is the 1st block called ".BackPressed".

how do I communicate with "key 1" in App Inventor?


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As said earlier in the thread,  developers can not activate your key #1at all from App Inventor.  Impossible.  App Inventor can use the ActivityStarter control to show some of the Android Settings but it cannot CHANGE any settings and it can not function as the #1 key.


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Thank you.

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I found this thread because I have a similar question to the one in the OP, but the final answer confuses me. My problem is that the context menu button is present in my app and I can't figure out if it can be removed. It's the one with the 3 dots in the bottom right of the screenshot below (from a Nexus 5).  I believe that on other phones this is actually the same button that the OP was referring to.  When you tap the button, the displayed options come up.  The About This Application option obviously displays the About information from the screen properties, but leaving that property blank doesn't remove the option because there is some hard-coded references to AI. The Settings option doesn't do anything at all.  I just want to get rid of this entire menu, but if I could at least remove the options in it and replace them with my own that would be fine too. I don't see how it's possible to suggest that these can't be coded given that they're clearly intended to be and AI is already using them,

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Sorry as stated there is currently no way to remove, code or change the current menu items, unless you use one of the personal servers. This is something still to come. See these for more info -


Menu options in app inventor
New option "Settings" in the menu

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