Amazon is in the process of pushing out a new firmware update to most Kindle Fire tablets and it primarily updates the Silk internet browser. One of the big enhancements is a new color scheme that replaces the darker colors and adds lighter shades of white and grey. There is also better support for multiple tabs open at once.
Silk was a major innovation when it was originally released in 2011. Instead of being a run of the mill web browser like Firefox or Chrome, Silk taps into the power and capabilities of the AWS infrastructure to overcome the limitations of typical mobile browsers. Instead of a device-siloed software application, Amazon Silk deploys a split-architecture. All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of the AWS cloud.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.