3.04 Paint Pot Projects

3.4 Paint Pot Projects Curriculum Page

Portfolio Reflection Questions:

1. For enhancement #6 (the if/else exercise) give a brief description of your solution to this problem. Provide a screen shot of your code -- the revised blocks -- and describe how the if/else block works to solve the problem in this case. If appropriate, include a description of any significant problems or bugs you encountered in solving this problem. App Inventor now has a Download Blocks as Image feature (right click on the white space in the blocks editor to choose) that also can be used to take a screenshot of all of your code or the Windows snipping tool can be used.

• In order to create enhancement #6, otherwise known as the if/else exercise, I solved the problem by arranging the blocks so that when the user tries to click the dot size to be lower than 1 or higher than 15, a notification will alert the user that the dot size has already reached its maximum or minimum. This action makes the dot size unable to get larger than 15 or smaller than 1. Screen shot with description below.

2. When you use the Camera component to take a picture as the Canvas background, explain why the picture goes away when the app is restarted. HINT: Think about the different hardware components we talked about in an earlier lesson and where on the device the picture is stored. What do you think could be done to prevent the picture from disappearing when the app is restarted?

• The picture taken goes away when the app is restarted because the picture is only stored in the RAM of the device. (Not coded into the app so it disappears). In order to prevent the picture from disappearing when the app is restarted, a line of code or blocks would need to be created that have the picture save within the code of the app so it stays there (even when restarted).

I created the blocks that limit the growth and reduction of the dot size by programming the app with a notification for the user. Both parts of my app were programmed the same way, so for explanation I will focus on how I programmed the app to prevent the user from reaching a dot size larger than 15. First, when the plus button is clicked, if the size of the dot is lower than 15, the dot size will increase by 1 and the text corresponding to the size will also increase 1. However, if the dot size is larger than 15, a notification will pop up on the app with the message that the dot has already reached its maximum size, causing the size to stay at 15. So the user would only be able to use a range of dot sizes including 1-15. By programming the apps this way, it will solve the problem of drawing with size 0 and a negative number, which would both be nonexistent.

App Write-Up