App Inventor opens up mobile Android development to the masses. Last summer, Google released App Inventor, a tool that lets you create Android applications without writing a single line of code. If you want to quickly get up to speed, try out the following resources.
If you want to dive straight in, head over to
App Inventor’s Setup page and try out I Programmer’s tutorial. If you ignore the many adds, it’s a robust tutorial that will get you going straight away.
The initial goal of App Inventor was to create a teaching tool. AppInventor.org explains why it’s useful for teachers (I think that’s a page maintained by Google, but I’m not sure). In spite of this targeting, I’m sure a much wider range of people will find the ideas and the application interesting.
Last but not least, the App Inventor blog also offers great tips and insights.
Obviously, not every one and every application will use App Inventor. In some regards, it is in fact fairly limited, however do not discard it too soon. There are some advanced things possible.
One thing I couldn’t find, was many actual applications built with it. I’m not sure if it’s because no real applications use App Inventor, whether they don’t advertise it, or whether they simply don’t show up in Google when searching for them. Let me know if you know some good examples, I’d love to see what’s possible.