We’ve been asked if we could put together a post that includes pointers to beta features for MIT App Inventor. This post will be occasionally updated with links to new functionality that we are testing. Note that links from this post may not always work, and no service linked to should be used for general development. They are provided on an as-is basis without any guarantee they will work correctly on your machine. We make no guarantee that these services will continue to live beyond the time at which we either merge the feature into App Inventor or decide to abandon it. You should export any projects you don’t wish to lose at the end of every session. If you encounter problems, please report them in a reply and indicate which service you were testing and the nature of the issue.
Designer copy & paste support - http://edit.ai2-ewpatton-temp.appspot.com
Introduces the ability to cut, copy and paste components using the platform standard key combinations. Corresponding event handlers are also copied. This behavior can be suppressed by holding the Shift key down when invoking the paste shortcut.
Drag & drop projects, extensions, and assets - http://dnd.ai2-ewpatton-temp.appspot.com
Introduces the ability to drag an AIA, AIX, and other files into App Inventor. Dragging in an AIA will upload the project and open it. AIX and other files will be added to the currently open project. Chrome users should also be able to drag the entries in their project list to their desktop to download them.
New Components
Absolute Arrangement - http://pr1792.ai2-ewpatton-temp.appspot.com
Adds a new arrangement that allows for positioning visible components anywhere on the screen, like the Canvas allows for sprites. Each component gains X, Y, and Z coordinates, which can be adjusted in both the designer and the blocks. Positioning can be done using absolute pixels or percentages.
The Absolute Arrangement will be a game changer i guess.
I tested it just yet and when i place a component in it, it works when i work with pixels.
When i change to percentages the component i placed in the arrangement disappears. It comes back when i use pixels again.
Everytime you pick up a component you drag a copy of the original, so you can see where you came from. Is that intentional? I could imagine just dragging the original. It would look less crowded with more components on the screen.
This is a bug that I will fix for the next version. For anyone interested, App Inventor internally represents percent sizes as (-1000 - percent), ao it's just positioning the components very far off the screen.
No. It should behave like dragging in other arrangements where the component is disconnected from its parent for dragging. Thanks for the report and I'll look into it.
The duplicate project name checking in the Project->New Project dialog is missing from the drag and drop facility. I have three copies (by name,) of a project on the dnd server, for what it's worth, though they have different create and modify timestamps to differentiate them.
Come to think of it, this is actually less confusing for me than the checkpoint system.
The augmented reality work was done by Nichole Clark as part of her master’s thesis entitled Through the Screen and into the World: Augmented Reality Components with MIT App Inventor. Nichole was key player in helping with the development of the iOS version of App Inventor, and her thesis work explored augmented reality through Apple’s ARKit framework. There isn’t an Android equivalent yet of the code she developed for the iOS version.
There have been a lot of interesting research projects with App Inventor over the years. If you want to learn more, I suggest skimming over the Related Research page on our website.
Caveat emptor: There are many unlisted App Inventor services out there that we develop for research purposes. They may come and go at any time, so if you plan to experiment with any of these please make systematic backups as we make no promises that they will remain available in the future.
