Chapter 10
Creating Visual Responses

Think back to the time when you enjoyed nothing more than busting out a box of crayons and a coloring book, creating brilliant wax-tinted works of art. For many people, coloring the pages of a coloring book was a popular childhood pastime. For others, maybe it was just yesterday.

Given the choice between an 8-color box of crayons and a 64-color box of crayons, which would you choose? Obviously, with 64 colors you would have ultimate flexibility in your creative designs. On the other hand, the 8-color box is much more portable and convenient if you want to carry it on a trip. The choice is dependent on how you plan to use it.

In the previous chapter, we saw how to use cards to add a visual complement to our skill responses. Working with cards is easy and straightforward, but they are quite limited, only allowing basic information and an optional image to be displayed. In this way, cards are like the 8-color box of crayons: portable and convenient, but limited in creative potential.

In this chapter, we’re going to explore the Alexa Presentation Language (APL), a template language for screen-based Alexa devices. APL, much like the 64-color box of crayons, allows us complete freedom in designing any visual interface we can dream up.