14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon hasn't been saying much about the Silk browser that powers all Kindle devices since it launched, but then again, Amazon doesn't really like to talk about its tools that much, it is much more focused on the experience.
Silk was rather interesting when it came out, even if it wasn't the first of its kind, since it relied a lot on the Amazon cloud to make up for the poor performance of the devices it was running on.
Now, it's getting a major update, the first in almost a year, and a major redesign to go with it. Plenty of parts of the browser have been rethought. There's a new start page, which lists the most visited sites, for example.
The tab bar has also been redesigned to make individual tabs easier to spot, a common complaint with the old version of the cloud browser.
Silk is also getting a new Reading View feature which, like the readability-type extensions you've seen for desktop browsers, makes it easier to focus on the actual content of a page, i.e. a longer article, and make for a more pleasant reading experience.
Amazon is also making it easier to access the various features and options in the browser, there's a new left-panel menu and new navigation pages.
The left menu, accessible either via the menu button in the top toolbar, or by swiping from the left side, provides a fast way of getting to the sites you regularly visit as well as the bookmarks, downloads and history.
The navigation pages, i.e. the bookmarks, have been revamped as well, there are now two ways of viewing the stored bookmarks, either in a list with thumbnails, or in a grid.
Finally, the browser has gotten some improvements under the hood as well, Amazon boasts that the WebKit engine that powers Silk has been updated, bringing better support for web features and better performance.