App Inventor for Android - Centering

The Google App Inventor for Android is a really interesting tool. Having quite a bit of iOS experience, I decided to give some android development a shot next. Some interenet research lead me to the App Inventor, which honestly should change the entire way we think of coding. Object oriented is, with this fantastic tool, literally objects that are manipulated on the screen.

I am not here to extol the virtues of App Inventor, I'm here to complain about one aspect of it. Layouts. Why can't this thing have a grid positioning tool?! At any rate, here is a technique to center an item on the screen with app inventor that may not be readily visible.

Select Screen Arrangement then add a horizontal arrangement to the screen. set the width to "fill parent."

Next Basic and add a label to the arrangement on the left, setting it's width to Fill Parent and delete the 'text for labelx. Now add your item to be centered next in the horizontal arrangement, in-line with the just placed label. Finally add another label to the right of your just placed item to be centered also setting it to fill parent and deleting the default text.

To now center this vertically, just follow what you've done already with labels. Add a label above the horizontal arrangement, setting its height to "fill parent". Add one below the horizontal arrangement setting it to Fill Parent as well. Also, uncheck "Scrollable" on the screen.

Anyway, that's ridiculous. How about some decent layout tools, Google? I have more layout abilities, right in my blog post editor. Otherwise applications designed with the app inventor are going to look like a 1998 Geocities layout.

I want to credit the App Inventor Coffee Shop for the guidance. I built the tutorial here but none of this was evident.