Tafiti and Silverlight make Searching Fun

For the millionth time, you’re loading up the Google search engine and you’re growing more and more tired of its dull, simple design. Isn’t this supposed to be the golden age of the web? If it is, then what is with all this text-based garbage that you’re looking at? Where is the powerful animation, the ability to save your searches, the visual representation? And for Pete’s sakes, where is the colour? No need to fret, because the solution is here, courtesy of Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Just to set things straight, Silverlight is basically a runtime that brings more animation and graphics to the world of the internet – very similar to Adobe’s Flash and Sun Microsystems’ Java engine. After installing the plug-in (which was very smooth), you can load up Tafiti and try for yourself the power of Silverlight (watch out, Flash)!

Tafiti brings in many aspects to searching made possible through the graphical power of Silverlight. For one thing, there are a lot more animations when the page itself loads. Although it seems very simple-looking initially, there are actually a huge number of those “index cards” that you can use. With every new search, you get a new card (er, gotta figure out how to back up to the previous result without getting rid of the present one though).

Also, with Tafiti, you can choose to view the results though a Tree View, which provides a very unique experience. Although I’m not sure how useful it will be, it does put some fun back in searching for things, and it actually is quite interesting to watch. The size of the tree itself is adjustable (the little scale at the bottom makes sure of that).

Last, but certainly not least, is the Stacks feature that Tafiti sports. On the right hand side of the Tafiti window, you will be able to see several slots. You can use your cursor to drag your search results into those slots (similar ones in the same slot) and save those search results if you are logged in with your .net passport. Otherwise, they will save, but only for the session until the window is closed.

Tafiti shows just an inkling of the promise that Silverlight holds for the future. I, for one, am really excited about the possibilities – even the slightly overlooked ‘Filter’ feature came in handy for my first Eagles search. However, I think it has a bit of work to do in order to catch up to Google – for example, why not add the number of pages at the bottom of the search results display instead of just a “more” button? Or perhaps a more graphical arrow or page flip would be more effective?

Don’t let my nit-picking throw you off though, because Tafiti is still just in it’s beta stages. Perhaps when 1.0 is debuted, Tafiti will have a whole slew of skins (it has a temporary Halo 3 skin as well as a regular Tafiti skin) – and hey, I wouldn’t mind having more skins to my search engine.  In case you’re interested, here it is: http://www.tafiti.com/.