Saturday, January 01, 2011

Kylo - TV Optimized Web Browser

Amplify’d from lifehacker.com

Kylo Is a Big-Screen, TV-Optimized Web Browser





Kylo Is a Big-Screen, TV-Optimized Web BrowserWindows/Mac: Kylo is a Mozilla-based web browser optimized for surfing the web on your HDTV from the comfort of your couch. Check out our screenshot tour to see it in all its 10-foot display glory.

Kylo was designed to complement the nifty gyroscopic mouse—produced by Kylo's parent company—called The Loop. While The Loop is pretty sweet and we certainly wouldn't mind field testing one, for our testing we just used a regular old wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up to our HTPC. Kylo shines without any fancy peripherals, although it's certainly a great ambassador for The Loop.


Kylo is optimized to be easy on your eyes and to make browsing the web from your couch as comfortable as possible. The address and toolbar are located on the bottom of the screen—looking down repeatedly towards the bottom of the screen is more eye-friendly than looking up to the top of the screen, it's also a better spot for good contrast if the TV is mounted too high.) They tailored everything from the buttons to the visual bookmarks for fumble-free clicking when the screen is far away.


We took both screenshots and actual photographs of Kylo in action. The photograph at the top of this article is of Kylo as viewed from a spot on the couch dead center to the television and approximately 13 feet away. Our tireless office helper Spawn volunteered to sit in for a sense of scale. The photographs of Kylo and Firefox—seen below—were taken from standing height approximately 18 feet away from the screen. We grabbed screenshots of same screens we photographed for those of you that wanted a clearer picture of the interface:


Kylo Is a Big-Screen, TV-Optimized Web Browser

Kylo Is a Big-Screen, TV-Optimized Web Browser

Kylo Is a Big-Screen, TV-Optimized Web Browser

Kylo Is a Big-Screen, TV-Optimized Web Browser


Kylo is a free offering from Hillcrest Labs, the company behind The Loop. The Loop is not required to use Kylo but an input device of some sort is—Kylo sports an on-screen qwerty keyboard, it's possible to go mouse-only. The only complaint, in fact, we can log against Kylo has nothing to do with Kylo itself—the jerks at Hulu decided to block Kylo the day Kylo publicly launched their browser. It was disappointing to load up Hulu only to have all the videos blocked. That said there are plenty of fish in the media sea and you can take your eyes elsewhere.


Have experience Kylo or The Loop? Let's hear about it in the comments. Can't quite let go of Firefox for your couch-based browsing? Check out how to set up a 10-foot display in Firefox so you can keep your add-ons and other tweaks. Kylo is freeware, Windows and Mac only. Thanks n00ge!


Kylo [via @n00ge]
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