Misconception: Students sometimes hard-code their apps in App Inventor instead of selecting “Fill parent” to fill the whole screen so their project does not display correctly on different size devices.

  • Sometimes students will manually adjust the dimensions of an image in App Inventor so that it fits a particular screen size; however, the image will not automatically adjust to a different sized screen.
    • To fix this, remind students to select "Fill parent" so their image fills up any size screen.
  • If students hard-code their apps to be the size of their phone screen, the app will show up phone-sized on larger screens (like tablets), leaving the rest of the screen outside of this small area useless and empty.
  • Having both an Android device and a tablet in class is helpful so that students can see how their projects will look on differently sized screens.
    • This gives the students an opportunity to uncover this misconception on their own.

More about this tip

External Source
Interview with Jennifer Rosato