Microsoft Corp. has launched an experimental Web site that plays with two technologies the company plans to make a big part of its Web strategy: Internet-based search and Silverlight.
The site, called “Tafiti,” which in Swahili means “do research,” provides a combination of Microsoft’s Live Search with an uncommon interface built using Silverlight. Microsoft launched Silverlight — a combination of player and development technology — in April as a way to embed multimedia graphics within Web browsers. The technology competes with Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash and Flash Player. Live Search is Microsoft’s search engine, which the company has completely overhauled in the past two years and continues to optimize in an effort to compete with Google Inc. and others.
Microsoft developed Tafiti with Seattle-based design firm Jackson Fish Market LLC as a way for people to organize information and do research for a project that would entail searching for various topics from different resources on the Web, including Web pages, images and books. Microsoft also wanted to show how its nascent Silverlight technology could create a new Web experience for search, the company said. Microsoft has not said whether it plans to use the site in a commercial way.
The search experience Microsoft presents in Tafiti is unlike most currently found on the Web. The graphics on the home page have a similar look and feel to the graphical user interface of Windows Vista — after all, Silverlight is based on Windows Presentation Foundation, the graphical subsystem contained in Vista. The page includes a box for entering a search topic on the left side of the screen, which is created to look like the top of a piece of looseleaf paper, with a blank white section in the center with the heading “Web” where search results appear. On the right is a notepad-like application that Microsoft calls a “shelf,” with thumbnail-size screen shots of what look like Web pages.
