App Inventor

Chapter 6. Paris Map Tour

In this chapter, you’ll build an app that lets you create your own custom guide for a dream trip to Paris. And since a few of your friends can’t join you, we’ll create a companion app that lets them take a virtual tour of Paris as well. Creating a fully functioning map app might seem really complicated, but App Inventor lets you use the ActivityStarter component to launch Google Maps for each virtual location. First, you’ll build an app that launches maps for the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame Cathedral with a single click. Then you’ll modify the app to create a virtual tour of satellite maps that are also available from Google Maps.

What You’ll Learn

This chapter introduces the following App Inventor components and concepts:

• The Activity Starter component for launching other Android apps from your app. You’ll use this component here to launch Google Maps with various parameters.

• The ListPicker component for allowing the user to choose from a list of locations.

Designing the Components

Create a new project in App Inventor and call it “ParisMapTour”. The user interface for the app has an Image component with a picture of Paris, a Label component with some text, a ListPicker component that comes with an associated button, and an ActivityStarter (non-visible) component. You can design the components using the snapshot in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1. TheParis Map ...