Hello everyone,
This weekend we will be releasing App Inventor version nb182. This release includes a new companion (2.57 and 2.57u), although you will only need to upgrade if you choose to use new functionality. This release includes the following changes:
- Added support for JSON-like dictionaries to the blocks language. There is a new category of blocks, called Dictionaries, that contains blocks for manipulating dictionaries. There are also blocks to convert traditional associative lists (lists of lists) into dictionaries and vice versa. (Thanks @data1013)
- Added methods in the Web component to work with JSON and XML using dictionaries rather than associative lists, as well as new method JsonObjectEncode to convert App Inventor types into JSON.
- Added if-else and if-elseif-else variations of the if block to the Controls drawer (normally one would create these using the mutator). (Thanks @Conor)
- Added HelloPurrStarter template. (Thanks @Conor)
- Made the project and extension upload dialogs only accept .aia and .aix files, respectively.
- Fixed a bug where assets and code were not sent in the right order, resulting in missing assets in live testing.
- Fixed an issue with app icons appearing “zoomed in”
- Fixed an issue where the newline character (\n) would not be rendered appropriately in Labels in the designer. (Thanks @matthewcoufal)
- Fixed some issues where resizing the companion app on a Chromebook would crash the companion.
- Fixed an issue where the “Show All Comments” command would cause ghost bubbles to appear due to comments on collapsed blocks.
- Fixed an issue on Android 9+ where READ_CALL_LOG permission was needed for the PhoneCall component but not requested.
- Fixed the return type of some list blocks that actually return strings. (Thanks @wxbit)
- Fixed an issue on Android 10 that prevented the Camera component from working correctly.
- Fixed potential null pointer exceptions in the code. (Thanks @Hossein )
- Fixed resource leak when deleting nested components. (Thanks @elatoskinas)
- Fixed an issue where the “global” keyword was breaking apps in Korean and Polish (due to translations).
- Miscellaneous internal development, documentation, and bug fixes. (Thanks @pavi2410, @Diego, @jerinjacob1999, @aashimgarg, and @bartmathijssen)
Please feel free to test your materials on ai2-test and let us know if you encounter any issues. Thank you to everyone who has already been helping us test.
Regards,
Evan W. Patton, Ph.D.
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor team