Have you ever experienced a great idea to get a smartphone application, but lacked the technical know-how to create it? Then you might you want to check out App Inventor beta, Google’s new Web-based Android app-making tool that lets any person build a smartphone application with no programming knowledge expected.
Instead of entering lines of code, App Inventor allows you to build an total application by dragging and dropping items like buttons, text entry boxes, and images onto the application builder. App Inventor also gives you access to some variety of phone features you can include in your app such as GPS, accelerometers, and integration with Web-based services such as Twitter.
Courtesy: AppStore HQ
By offering simple do-it-yourself tools, Google might spark an explosion in Android application development that could help the Android Market grow even larger than Apple’s iPhone App Store.
As it stands right now, Google’s Android Market has extra than 60,000 applications even though the iPhone offers far more than 200,000. Developer numbers are also significantly larger for Apple than Android.
Apple boasts extra than 43,000 registered iOS developers although barely 10,000 are building for Android, according to some recent record by AppStore HQ, a smartphone-tracking Web page.
But is it a Good Thing?
App Inventor promises to swell the ranks of Android application developers. But even though the capacity to create a smartphone application may perhaps be empowering for that average user, it might also bring its own set of problems to your Android platform.
Google is by now below heavy criticism over how the Android Market is run. As opposed to Apple’s App Store, the Android Market is totally open and virtually any one who can build an app can then sell it to users. Instead of employing gatekeepers to weed out malicious and broken applications within the Android Market, Google relies on crowd-sourced policing such as user reviews and stories to Google when an application misbehaves.
But that policy has caused some to suggest Android apps are riskier to use than their iPhone counterparts.
A recent analyze by protection firm SMobile suggested that 20 % of all Android apps let third-parties access your private or sensitive information such as phone numbers and location details. SMobile notes that many of these apps have no malicious intent against users, but there are already cases of misbehaving Android apps. An android developer named Droid09, for example, was ready to insert a phishing application into the Android Market that tricked individuals into revealing their online banking credentials, according to SMobile.
Then again, the iPhone App Store isn’t immune to bad actors either. Recently, Apple blocked a Vietnamese-based iPhone app developer in the iPhone store just after Apple mentioned his apps violated “the developer Program License Agreement, such as fraudulent purchase patterns.”
SDK for Beginners
Of program, if App Inventor takes off, Apple could participate as well. App Inventor is basically a stripped-down version belonging to the software development kits that full-fledged Android and iPhone developers use on the regular basis. Just like App Inventor, Apple’s iPhone SDK uses drag and drop functionality to create an application interface. The difference is that Apple’s SDK also requires you to create part in the underlying code that powers the interface you create. App Inventor, about the other hand, lets you build a complete application right in your browser just by creating the interface.
App Inventor could become a popular tool between users who want to try their hand at smartphone application development. But we’ll have to check out no matter whether App Inventor becomes an Android boon or boondoggle.
If you’re interested in joining the App Inventor beta program, you can sign up here.
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