Mozilla Mombasa held this event with an aim of introducing fellow tech enthusiasts to Mozilla Appmaker; a free, open source app authoring tool that lets you drag and drop individual components to build and share custom mobile apps right into your web browser. The event was held in the spacious on the 6th floor the JKUAT Mombasa Campus. Participants started coming in early minutes before the event and settled.
First off, we had Alifiyah Mozilla Mombasa Representative taking the participants through the basics of the Appmaker which would equip participants with the knowledge of building apps. She spoke of the unveiling of the Keon phone by Mozilla, and it already doing rounds in the market has brought about the need for good functionality driven apps. The need is increasing and thus Mozilla has considered this by having Appmaker in this year’s Maker Party 2014 to introduce newbie’s and technologists to the basics of app development. First participants had to get familiar with App Makers Development Environment and after getting acquainted it was time to get into building the apps. We were first divided into groups so we could each embark into working on the apps. It wasn’t that easy.
Each of the groups had to come up with apps and apps of course do have multiple pages where one can navigate from one page to another. This navigation through pages proved to be a hard nut to crack for all. At first, we spent close to an hour or two trying to ponder how to link these two pages, it was indeed a conundrum. Despite this we eventually had a breakthrough with one Phillip Mwaniki discovering a way through it.
I hereby pose a challenge to you, try it by yourself here is a link to Appmaker.
https://apps.webmaker.org/designer
And oh! If you discover a way through it do get back here and share with us all, or if you don’t manage to, give us a shout we’ll be glad to assist.
So after that mind boggling session the rest of the work was like a walk in the park. We then had a lunch break and went back into the App maker to polish the apps in readiness for the final presentation. Though grappling with major internet problems each group managed to finalize on their apps and present. Here is a sample of wwhat one group created;
Ruth’s group
https://good-love-688.webmak.es/app
Towards the end of the session we had Harris Mwashalo also encourage participants to participate in the building of (Link) Msa Social group and an “Eureka Moment” from again Phillip Mwaniki. Did you know you could actually use text html tags in the App Maker text boxes? Well do find out for yourself, insert this tags see for yourself.
<p> Mozilla Appmaker </p>
<p> <strong> Mozilla Appmaker</strong></p>
The event was a success despite the challenges and we do hope to see Mombasa have mobile apps on the market place. We hope to see you in the next event.
Special gratitude goes to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology for their support and cooperation and to all the volunteers who made the event a success!
