Amazon has announced and released an update to its Silk browser for Kindle Fire tablets. This should be available or already installed on all new $50 Fire tablets, as well as legacy Kindle Fire tablets as far back as 2013. But has the update overcome Silk’s shortcomings?

According to Amazon, the new updates – largely cosmetic – include an updated navigation bar, updated home page experience, simplified bookmarking, an improved Reading List, and improved tab support.

From my own experience, the new features are attractive, but don’t really add what I’m looking for from Silk. The new home page tiles offer more immediate and navigable access to frequently visited pages, but then this wasn’t exactly a problem before. The Reading List may offer a handy mini-bookmarking resource for one-off reads, online or offline, but then, so can a simple open tab. And above all, the bookmarks feature: yes, it’s good to be able to save bookmarks quickly. But still to be unable to categorize them? Or import them? That’s a massive failing that still isn’t fixed.

I’ve railed about this issue previously, sharing all I knew about workarounds for the problem. And it still seems such a no-brainer that I’m wondering if I’m ignoring some obvious function that I missed so far. I mean, what’s the point of powering your browser with a superfast supercomputer if you deprive it of one of the most basic browser features? Until that gets fixed, Amazon is still depriving its customers of a fundamental function of all browsers, without any apparent good reason. Given that we’re dealing with a company that prides itself on being the global consumer’s best friend, could someone please explain that to me?

Fire bookmarks

 

 

9 COMMENTS

  1. Silk now will always forces you to mobile version of websites. You can request a desktop version but you have to do it every time you visit every website that has a mobile version. Desktop version is no longer a Silk default option.

    Can’t name a bookmark when setting it. I bookmarked a bunch of YouTube videos and then went to the list of bookmarks and couldn’t tell which bookmark was which.

    Bottom line they made Silk run a little faster at the expense of usability and did so for all
    Fires. And by an amazing coincidence this came just as they are pushing cheaper slower Fires.

  2. I see no advantages but so far one disadvantage. The paste function no longer works for me in facebook. It appears I can cut or copy a link but paste does nothing. I sent feedback and they said they would pass it on, but essentially said too that I have to wait for an upgrade.

  3. Sent a complaint in and got a very polite apology in broken English. So what! I can’t cut and past links for Facebook and frankly the New updates look scrappy cosmetically so again I ask myself….is it finally time for nexus?

  4. Has any one else been having trouble with pics/downloads? I know I’m a little late with this but my kindle updated in late February and ever since then my downloads aren’t working properly. When my kindle updated half of my downloads were gone! They either showed up with an x over them or didn’t show up at all. Every time I download something new, more downloads get deleted. If any one knows how to fix this please help! If I can’t get help I may trash my kindle and get an iPad instead.

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