14 DAY TRIAL // A top notch Windows Vista screensaver is coming to your desktop, not from Microsoft's Ultimate Extras website, but courtesy of the design firm Jackson Fish Market. You have been able to read recently of a new Microsoft search project and experiment dubbed Tafiti. Essentially, Tafiti is a marriage between Live Search and Silverlight and an interesting approach all the way. In terms of an alternative perspective over search, Tafiti offers users the Tree View. A fully animated tree environment with orbiting search results. And believe it or not, this is the best that Microsoft has to offer in terms of screensavers for Windows Vista since the launch of the operating system. Because the Live Search/Silverlight Tree View is designed to act as a dynamic desktop screensaver.
"In the simplest terms, the Tafiti tree view is a screensaver. We haven't done the work (yet?) to wire it into the machines actual screensaver mechanism, but we think about it as a passive way to browse more deeply into search results. (...) As the tree spins, the leaves start to turn fall-like. And as each leaf turns from orange to red it finally reaches an end point, turns green again, and the next web result shows up. In this fashion you can leave the tree running for some time as it browses very deep into the search query specified. The longer you let the tree run, the deeper you are browsing into the result set," revealed Hillel Cooperman, one of the founders of Jackson Fish Market.
You might have noticed that I keep referring to Microsoft although the tree view is in fact the work of the Jackson Fish Market. Well, first off, Tafiti is a Live Search and Silverlight combination, and in this context its connection to Microsoft cannot be denied. And second, the Jackson Fish Market reeks of Microsoft. Hillel Cooperman for example is a former Microsoft design director. And the design firm also features Tjeerd Hoek, former Design Director of Windows User Experience (UX) at Microsoft and Jenny Lam User Experience Designer both of them heavyweights during the Windows Vista development.
"If you have two monitors you could set up the Tafiti tree to run on the second monitor while you do your main work on your first. After several minutes you'll be deeper into the result set than 99.99% of users ever go. And of course, when you get to something interesting you can check it out. I know this is kind of an esoteric feature, but we think there's something interesting there in terms of browsing the Live Search index in a deeper way than most users ever do. It was also cool that Microsoft was willing to let us experiment with a feature that's a little different than what people might expect. Anyway, that's the intention of the Tafiti tree view," Hillel concluded.