May 28, 2022 jeff's Blog

Release nb189

This coming week we are planning on releasing a new version of MIT App Inventor, version nb189. This is a “component” release which will include a new MIT AI2 Companion, version 2.63.

In addition to bugfixes, this release contains two new languages, Catalan and Turkish.

An important change, for people using the YandexTranslate component, is that we will be replacing this component with a new component named “Translator.”

This new component has the same interface as YandexTranslate, and projects loaded into version nb189 will automatically have their blocks updated to use the Translator component instead.

The Translator component uses a service located at MIT which in turn may use one of several commercial translation services. Currently, we are leveraging Amazon’s translation service.

Applications packaged with previous versions of MIT App Inventor will continue to use YandexTranslate. Applications packaged with nb189 (or newer) will use the Translator component service.

A New Way to Connect the Companion (coming soon)

Release nb189 lays the infrastructure for a new method of connecting your browser to the companion app. This is approach replaces our current legacy connection, if you check the “Use Legacy Connection” on the Companion home screen.

If you do not use legacy connections, then nothing will change for you.

This new legacy approach provides two important features.

1. It will permit us to serve MIT App Inventor over a secure (https) connection.
2. Around November, we expect Google to make a change to Google Chrome (and related browsers) which will break our old legacy connection method. This new approach will continue to work.

This new approach uses a pop-up window to permit the actual connection. When invoked you may get a dialog box which just asks you to click a “Continue” button. This is so Chrome (and Firefox) will allow the pop-up to open and do its work.

This new approach requires an update to the Companion that is not included in version 2.63. So no changes will be seen with this release.

However, we will soon be putting version 2.64 in the Google Play Store as a beta test. If you want to see this new approach before it is rolled out widely, you will be able to join the beta program.

More information about this will be published as we get closer to having Companion version 2.64 ready for testing.

-Jeff