App Inventor Extensions Final Testing

[Hal Abelson]

Last month, we announced the development of App Inventor extensions, a feature that lets anyone create new components that enhance the functionality of App Inventor.   We are almost ready to release extensions as part of MIT App Inventor, but we’d like to invite people to do some additional testing.

The document App Inventor Extensions describes how to create and use extensions.   Please help us test the implementation, and provide feedback as explained in the document.

We’re looking forward to releasing extensions as a major upgrade to App Inventor’s capabilities, but we need more testing and feedback before moving ahead.

[Soren]

This is certainly going to be a great functionality and I would really like to run some tests with it. What refrains me from doing so is the fact that there is no easy to follow step by step guide for creating an extension.
To involve more people into testing, I kindly ask someone who knows to create a new easy guide. Maybe it would be possible to just change an existing extension so not all the work needs to be done from scratch?

[Abraham Getzler]

I loaded the Scale Detector sample and followed its (?) docs link

from the Designer.  See attached for what was not found.

Was documentation supplied in the .aix file?

ABG

[Abraham Getzler]

I looked in the splash screen of the extensions test server for a link to its companion,

but I encountered only a link to the existing setup instructions, with the non-extensions companion.

Searching prior posts for the elusive extensions companion ...

ABG

[Hossein Amerkashi]

Documentation isn't completed.

[Abraham Getzler]

Never mind, found it under the Help->Companion button.

ABG

[Abraham Getzler]

Regarding the Scale Detector extension, 

(Pinch Detector would have been more to the point, in my book, (the user pinches, your blocks then might scale or squeal in pain))

I am seeing a class error in my ball-bouncing-off-diagonal-line-sprite example I hadn't been seeing before,

when my ball bounces off my sprite.

I have attached screen shots, block shots, and .aia export.

I will repeat the experiment on the extensionless server, to see if 

my app had gone stale during the responsive upgrades, and report on that in a subsequent post.

ABG

[Abraham Getzler]

Regarding my diagonal_line_bounce_test app with the pinch detector extension, 

I can confirm that the current app on the current server does not incur that class error

from my prior post.

ABG

[Hal Abelson]

Hossein,

what documentation is missing?

thanks

== Hal

[Hal Abelson]

Hmmm.....

We're going to need to really look at this.   It's very suspicious.

thanks for catching it.

[Hossein Amerkashi]

Hal

I was referring to JavaDoc

[Justus Raju]

com.google.appinventor.components.runtime.com.google.appinventor.components.runtime.ImageSprite

@ABG

Did you have the correct Companion  when you received this error?

Can you reproduce this error?

From what I presume you probably had a non-extension companion and tried to use it with an extension project. 

Jus

[Hal Abelson]

Thanks.   I added a comment to the Google doc, so we won't forget to do that.

[Abraham Getzler]

@Justus,  I verified my emulator was running version 2.33cdk1.

See attached.

To reproduce the problem, load and run the attached .aia file,

dragging the rotating red line to the center of the screen and then

tapping near it to attract the bouncing ball to it.

ABG

[Justus Raju]

@Abraham 

Thank you so much. Found out what was causing this issue. Fixed it. You will see the ball bounce off the line in the next release.  :)

Thanks again. :)

Jus

[Abraham Getzler]

@Justus,

I hope you will consider renaming the ScaleDetector component to PinchDetector.

Calling it ScaleDetector is like putting the cart before the horse.

First comes the Pinch,

then comes the app programmer responding by changing the Scale.

Your extension does not in itself change the dimensions of any visible GUI component.

It also does not respond when any external event causes any change in GUI dimensions, like for example an 

orientation change.  So it's not Detecting Scale.

It acts as a Pinch Detector, so let it be named as such.

ABG

[Hal Abelson]

I considered this when I created the example, but decided to stay more consistent with the Android SDK:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/ScaleGestureDetector.html

But maybe you're right, and I should change it.

[Abraham Getzler]

Google's terminology (ScaleGestureDetector) includes the critical word Gesture,

helping to imply that this detects the horse that pulls the scale cart.

I notice in your linked page that Google offers an alternate gesture technique

other than a pinch, so my suggestion is too restrictive.

I now think Google's terminology (ScaleGestureDetector) beats both 

ScaleDetector and PinchDetector in descriptive power.

ABG

[jim le]

Will we ever get a WiFi and or WiFi-direct(P2p) extension?.

[SteveJG]

Non developers and aix developers should be aware of the following just posted to the Extensions instructions yesterday:

Warning:  The extensions system is still experimental and the internal format of extensions is changing.  If you create a project (aia file) that imports an extension, it is possible that the extension (and the project) will stop working when the extensions system in upgraded.   You’ll have to rely on the extension developer to provide an updated extension.