Proposal - simplified "make color" & "split color" blocks

[Gareth Haylings]

Hi

I have simplified the make color & split color block so they no long need to use a list block to assign RGB colours.

For full details about the proposal  visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bG39GMz5xN2amUywPiutie3PSJyEnYaifegAc-nLzHM/edit?usp=sharing

The pull request for the enhancement is: https://github.com/mit-cml/appinventor-sources/pull/72

Current App inventor 2 block	Proposed App Inventor 2 replacement blocks to give the same result	Result
		240
		167
		219
		100

This feature can be tested live at  http://mad-robot-dev.appspot.com/

To use the version of app inventor with an android device you will need the MrAI companion app

Download MrAI companion app v0.01Alpha

Please note: no other companion app with work with this version of app inventor

Sample project to demonstrate the enhancement

Download example project Demo_ColourPicker.aia

Download built project Demo_ColourPicker.apk

[scottfromscott]

Very nice!

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Scott

[Abraham Getzler]

How will this affect backwards compatibility of programs that use the old color make/split blocks?

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[Gareth Haylings]

Thank you. 

[Jos Flores]

In theory we would upgrade all the programs so that they use the new blocks (we do that in AI1), but that is something we still don't have for AI2.

I personally like the proposal, but from the point of view of teaching CS principles, the current implementation is more playful.

cheers,
José

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[Gareth Haylings]

Hi Abraham

It's backward compatible so won't effect or break previous projects which is the good news.

The reason I did this enhancement is because I've always thought the way the "make color" and "split color" blocks are used is over complicated, hard to understand and awkward to use.The bad news is I don't think my enhancement will be added to MIT App Inventor as I think they want to still teach the split color and make color as it currently works.

All is not lost though. If you do want to use my method of the "make color" and "split color" a long  with bunch of other extra feature it's available in my extended version of App Inventor called MrAI (stands for Mad Robots App Inventor).

If you visit my website www.themadrobot.talktalk.net you can find out more about MrAI

I am currently adding a FileManager component which should be available in MrAI by the end of next week.

If you do use MrAI one thing you will notice in the block editor is that due the the amount of extra function's and property's I have added it can take 12seconds to select a imagesprite or ball property. A quick work round for this is to type the command. I will be sorting this out.

You will find the extended features I've added to MrAI make it easy to make platform games and gravity based games which are not possible to create in MIT AI2

Cheers

Gareth

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[Gareth Haylings]

playful or painful? hee hee

cheers,
José

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[Giorgio Ughini]

With the new ai2 have we lose the possibility to make a trasparent button?

I need to, but in ai1 I should only set color as "NONE" but in this ai2 this option "NONE" is missing...

Or maybe I am not able to find it ?

Thank to all

[innoovative thiinking]

appended to this.. it would be ideal if #fff #ffffff styled component could be added as well.

as it would be far easier to setup / implement your palette.. which is also already web compatible. and developers of websites can easily marry-up web based pallette with App simply.

cheers.

[scottfromscott]

@innovative thinking

Since make color accepts a list of 3 or 4 items a 'list from hex' block could be an intermediate between it and a text block containing your suggested #ff #ffffff hex color code.

It would be easy to make that function even with AI blocks, unfortunately every user would have to recreate it or copy a screen containing it at this point.

We really need shared library support for AI so we don't have to resort to modifying the sources any time we want to make something new.

That is a real problem.

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Scott