If you’re considering building a media-based app for Fire TV, Amazon provides two frameworks to help you get started and accelerate your development: Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV (WASK) and Fire App Builder. In this post, we are going to take a high-level look at each of these frameworks, the particular skill sets they are built for and variations in their feature sets.  Let’s first take a look at WASK for Fire TV.

Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV

Skill set

WASK is intended for web developers building HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript web apps. Developers and content owners can use the full-featured customizable HTML5 web app template to quickly create dynamic media apps suited for the 10-foot experience.

Features and customizations

With WASK, you begin with a base app template that contains specific media functionality (for example, support for Media RSS or JSON feeds, or support for online video providers such as YouTube or Brightcove). Next, you customize the template by either changing the settings files or adding extended functionality by using standard web technologies (WASK currently supports JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3 web technologies).

Baked into the WASK template is the code needed to build the big screen experience consumers expect, as well everything needed to pass Amazon Appstore testing that takes place during the app submission process. At the bare minimum, you need to provide the feed of media files that the app will use on Fire TV to display a selectable list of categories for consumers and a rotating carousel of media content.

Here’s a screenshot of a simple layout created with WASK:

After customizing or extending the basic WASK template, you can test your app using the Amazon Web App Tester. This is a free Fire TV tool used to test web apps on an actual device. The Amazon Web App Tester uses the same native app wrapper and web engine that will be used when the app is published, giving you an accurate preview of your app during development.

Submitting your app

When you app is ready, submit it to the Amazon Appstore following these simple instructions:

1. Login in or register to the Amazon Developer Portal.
2. Fill in the basic app details.
3. Upload your thumbnail and preview images.
4. Select where you wish to host your app’s asset files (either on your own web server or through Amazon’s servers).

Your published app will look indistinguishable from native apps on Fire TV. No native coding required.

For inspiration, check out these engaging apps that were created using WASK: Acorn TV, Al Jazeera, Urban Movie Channel, and Euronews. Get started with WASK by taking a look at the Github page or learn more by taking a look at the documentation.

Fire App Builder

Skill set

Fire App Builder provides a Java-based framework that you can use to easily and quickly build streaming media Android apps for Amazon Fire TV. With Fire App Builder, you work in Android Studio, connecting to your Fire TV device through Android Debug Bridge (ADB), and generating an APK (Android Package Kit) file to upload to the Amazon Appstore.

Features and customizations

Although Fire App Builder uses Android APIs (particularly the Leanback Library), you do much of the configuration and customization through JSON and XML files. Components of the Fire App Builder provide out-of-the-box functionality for analytics, ads, authorization, purchasing, and media players.

Fire App Builder minimizes dependence on Java expertise as much as possible, but for more deep-level integration, you can build on top of Fire App Builder. While no custom Java programming is required to create an engaging app, you can add your own custom Java classes to extend functionality through common interfaces and additional code.

With Fire App Builder, your media feed can be JSON or XML, in any structure using any tag names. When you configure Fire App Builder, you’ll write query syntax (using JSON Jayway syntax or XPath expressions) to target the various elements of your feed.

You can also program your feed to require tokens for media protected by DRM. Support for YouTube-based feeds and other video hosting services is on the roadmap but not currently included.

You have control to adjust the colors, layout, typography, and more — all by simply editing XML or JSON files where these settings have been extracted.

Here’s a screenshot of a sample app built using Fire App Builder:

A more compressed homepage layout is also available. To learn more, see the Fire App Builder documentation.

Submitting your app

You submit your app following the same process listed above.

Summary and Comparison

Both WASK and Fire App Builder come with a set of ready-to-go features. You can add the services and features you want into either framework. The code is open (and open source), and you’re free to enhance, extend, or otherwise build on top of the framework’s code.

Note: If a framework doesn’t have a feature, it doesn’t mean the framework won’t support it. It just means the feature isn’t already integrated in the code. Usually you can easily insert the third-party code needed to support these services.

For more information on using WASK and Fire App Builder to build new experiences for consumers on Fire TV, watch our free on-demand webinar with Amazon Developer Evangelist Mario Viviani.

To start building web apps for Fire TV using these frameworks, review the documentation on WASK for Fire TV or Fire App Builder.