Amazon Web Services Inc. is making it easier to build user interfaces for web applications with the introduction of a new cloud-based development tool called AWS Amplify Studio.

Amplify Studio, which made its debut during the cloud giant’s re:Invent event today, is part of an existing service called AWS Amplify. The latter service reduces the amount of manual work involved in building web and mobile apps. The new Amplify Studio tool adds additional capabilities focused on simplifying the task of building user interfaces.

The challenge AWS hopes to address is that user interface developers often struggle to balance two requirements: speeding up project completion times and customizing their code. AWS positions Amplify Studio as the answer to the challenge. 

The traditional way of developing a user interface is to create all the necessary code and graphics assets from scratch. However, that can take months in complex application projects. As a result, software teams are increasingly adopting low-code tools that improve productivity by making it possible to perform common tasks with drag and drop controls instead of by writing code. 

But low-code tools come with their own set of challenges. User interfaces created with such products can be difficult to customize, which is an issue for companies that have complex application requirements.

One reason for the limited customizability is that not all low-code tools offer the ability to fully modify the code of a user interface. Other offerings provide more extensive code editing options, but require developers to make customizations using proprietary programming languages that can be unwieldy. 

AWS says Amplify Studio takes a better approach. Similarly to traditional low-code products, the tool significantly reduces the amount of manual development work involved in building an application interface. At the same time, however, Amplify Studio also enables developers to extensively customize the code of the user interfaces they create.

Many enterprise software teams rely on a cloud service called Figma to design their applications’ interfaces. Figma Inc., the startup that operates the service, recently raised funding at a $10 billion valuation. Amplify Studio can take a user interface design created in Figma and automatically turn it into either JavaScript or TypeScript code. This code can be edited by developers, which is what allows Amplify Studio to provide the customizability that certain other low-code products lack. 

Because the tool generates code in JavaScript and TypeScript, two of the industry’s most widely used programming languages, software teams should have a relatively easy time customizing interfaces. Many programmers specializing in interface development already use the two languages as part of their day-to-day work.

To speed up application projects even more, Amplify Studio comes with a library of prebuilt interface components. Developers have access to buttons, newsfeeds, user registration forms and other commonly used elements.

Once the user interface is created, it has to be connected to the internal code components an application uses to carry out user requests. A user registration form, for example, must be linked to the code that generates new accounts. Such behind-the-scenes components are collectively known as the application backend.

Amplify, the AWS service of which the newly announced Amplify Studio is part, provides features for building backend components. Developers can use the service to spin up database tables, user authentication workflows and file storage. Amplify provisions the necessary cloud infrastructure resources automatically.

Amplify Studio incorporates all of Amplify’s existing backend creation and management features, AWS said. The tool allows developers to easily link interface components with the relevant backend code. Customers only pay for the AWS services used to run the application’s backend. 

“AWS Amplify Studio is a game changer for developers because it allows them to rapidly iterate on their UI using prebuilt components and then fully customize the UI with familiar programming languages to meet their exact needs,” said Kurt Kufeld, vice president of AWS Platform. “From setting up a robust backend powered by AWS to creating a dynamic UI, AWS Amplify now provides an intuitive, end-to-end workflow to build web applications in days instead of weeks, so developers can deliver new innovations to end users faster.

AWS is targeting a growing market with Amplify Studio. One indicator of the growing popularity of tools that can reduce coding requirements for developers is the increasing investor interest in this segment. Low-code and no-code startups have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding since the start of 2020.

The ability to speed up development is only part of the reason why solutions such as Amplify are gaining traction. Another factor is software reliability. In theory, an application created fully or partly through a visual interface can be less prone to bugs than a program written entirely manually because it includes less custom code with the potential to malfunction. Reducing the need to troubleshoot software issues eases another historically time-consuming tasks for developers. 

Image: AWS