[App Inventor Open Source Development] Public - Who's In? Making AI2 with AI2

As many of you may have noticed, AI2 can really only be used with full functionality to create apps on the computer, yet a lot of people seem to be interested in being able to make apps on their phone or tablet.  Sadly, in the many previous topics where people have requested the addition of that functionality it has been rejected due to the fact that the amount of work it would require would make it difficult for the staff to manage the current computer version.

However, I had an idea.  The staff aren't the only ones who can create an app - with AI2, we all have the ability to do it ourselves!  That's why I want to make a proposition:  Why don't we users make AI2 (or some equivalent) for mobile using AI2?  Yes, the concept sounds a bit weird and would take a huge amount of work from a large amount of people, but I think it could get done if some users with various skills team up to make it.

That's why I'm wondering if anyone would like to make a team and work on it.  I've got some pretty good AI2 and design skills to give, but there's a lot of areas that I'm clueless on, like how to actually turn blocks into the code that would run the app.  So, anyone interested in helping make AI2 for mobile a reality?

Have you checked out catrobat on the Google Play Store yet?

Their Pocket Code app has a common ancestor with App Inventor, Scratch.

Catrobat (now renamed as Pocket Code) is a very nice project.   We at MIT are friends with the folks at Technical University of Graz who make this.

As far as a version of AI that was friendlier to development on tablets and even phones, I'd LOVE to see some people work on this.   We don't have the slack to do this in the MIT group but can follow the project and give advice.

Happy New Year.

Look at the "External Libraries" (and the rest of the page) here to get an idea of how much "stuff" there is in App Inventor that would have to be shoe-horned into Android (on MANY different devices and Android versions):https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hIvAtbNx-eiIJcTA2LLPQOawctiGIpnnt0AvfgnKBok/pub#h.iab2owsim0i2

I'm a seasoned professional independent developer making a living from a few Android apps. I too would love to see something like AI on Android itself.

I first learned Android basics 4 years ago with AI before moving to Java and C NDK. I've been dying to see visual programming for real for decades now. Better yet would be the ability to make "pro" apps, and last I looked a year or so ago, AI didn't seem well suited as an alternative to Android Java for professional/paid apps.

All that "stuff" looks like it could take forever to port well, and MIT wants to stick with PC, so a fork would be necessary I guess.

I think a fresh start would be a better approach, starting with something smaller like Scratch, or maybe Stencyl ?



AI2 Neede a browser and an internet connection to run. Therefore you can developer apps on your tablet right now. I do not have a decent android tablet, but on my iPad mini I tried Safari and Chrome, and many things work. I was even able to save an .aia to Dropbox, but when I tried to import an .aia I got stuck in an internal error.
So maybe it is not that difficult to fix. A major problem I think will be the small screen and that would be true for any solution. The possibility to split up the blocks into smaller groups would become a major asset to have.



As Ghica says, you can try running AI2 in a phone or table browser right now.  There's a lot to do to make it usable -- the biggest thing is to redo the UX to accommodate the small screen.

For that, you might want to be guided by Touch-Develop, and show the blocks for only one component at a time.   So putting AI on a tablet or phone is aa serious project but not na impossible one. 

It would be terrific so see some people on this list tackle it.