BitTorrent has released a new client this week called Chrysalis in an attempt to keep novice users interested in the BitTorrent service. Chrysalis has been specially designed with new users in mind, so it’s clearly laid out with free, legal content easily accessible from the main page.

Chrysalis will eventually replace the Mainline client currently in use. The design for Chrysalis arose when BitTorrent looked at their user statistics and noted that many users downloaded and installed the client, but never became regular users. They hope that the straightforward design will encourage novice users to explore new content and use the client more frequently.

The intuitive design makes it easy to find popular content and to add it to your torrent downloads. For instance, it’s a simple one-click process to add content from TED or Zulu Music.

Once the download is in progress, there’s a very clear download management screen which focuses more on the basic details and media than the advanced torrent data. Users can easily see how much of a file has been downloaded, how long it is expected to take and what the health of the torrent file is. The advanced data is still available for experienced users who want to speed up their torrents, but in a separate panel.

Users of uTorrent have been reassured that uTorrent will not be replaced by Chrysalis and will be developed separately.

The free alpha release of Chrysalis is available to download for Windows now.

If you’re keen to learn more about torrents, check out our free BitTorrent PDF guide.

Source: TorrentFreak