No problem, go right ahead. Please feel free to quote anything you like. My twitter account is @sectorfej, and the new one that I created for the AML project is @amlcode.

tb: … very interesting, like the concept. So I read your post first thing this morning and think “how come heavy weight companies don’t come with tool sets ala VB6 when releasing wonders like Android?” … http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

@tb,

Wow, that is awesome! It’s like DroidDraw on steroids and provided by Google. That is a great move on their part—though I tremble to think of the deluge of lame apps that may flood the Android Market as a result of this. Not to knock it though; I’d much rather have to wade through 100 lame apps if the same tool also produces one absolutely stupendous one. It certainly does lower the barrier to entry for Android development, that’s for sure.

I think AML will still be able to fill the “thin client powered by a web service” niche though, and some developers may still prefer coding to the GUI-based experience provided by AppInventor. I personally like VB for some tasks, since it really is easy, but I know some people who don’t care for it. I’ll have to play with AppInventor for a bit now.

Tobia: Hi, it is a good idea…I am working on a similar one…did you plan to make it opensource?
Thanks

@Tobia,

Thanks! I am indeed planning to make it open source. Absolutely. The only reason I don’t have the source up right now is that as it is, missing a few key features, it isn’t really useful as a library. Once I get some event handling in place, I’ll make all the code available and hopefully write some basic instructions. Good luck on your similar project–unless you just want to wait for this one now.

Murat: wow, that looks great and very promising. I would definitly prefer this “aml” to android layout xml. So the yes i definitly would want to get my hands on this!!

@Murat,

Thanks! I hope to have a useful tool available for you all shortly. I’m glad you like how it’s turning out so far.

Jude Ibe: I just wonder how does it behave with multiple screen sizes and also how would I theme it, make it look presentable.

@Jude,

So far, there is nothing in the code that requires a specific screen size, while there is a density detection feature that should help standardize the behavior across multiple sizes. Android has a nice unit called a “dip” or simply “dp”, meaning Density Independent Pixel (as you may already know). Unfortunately, directly building views with code only allows you to specify absolute pixels; you can only use a “dp” unit in the /res/layout XML files (grr!). However, the API provides a way to detect screen density and simply calculate a scale factor. This is done automatically by the AML main build method, and then it is used automatically whenever pixel values are given. So, if I specify a padding="6" attribute on a table cell, it will automatically multiply it by a scale factor of 1.5 on my Motorola Droid (854×480), and use a literal pixel value of 9. This feature will ultimately be optional, but it does work great for now.

The same AML code works in both portrait and landscape mode as well, though it is my goal to allow a unique view definitely on the same Activity screen for portrait and landscape mode, so you can rearrange things based on orientation if it makes sense to do so. That feature isn’t there yet though.

As for theming: although you can specify foreground and background colors on individual objects, I realize this falls short of what will be necessary. I have read a little bit about Android’s themes and styles, but that’s it so far. I’m thinking maybe something analogous to CSS, and/or something to access styles built into the app. That’s lower on the priority list than getting the basic functionality to work, but still important.

Good thoughts!