Using Tafiti, A Silverlight Demo Walkthrough

Tafiti is a demonstration of Microsoft Silverlight combined with search technologies. Tafiti uses Silverlight to provide the rich interface experience and Microsoft Live Search as the search engine. Tafiti is the Swahili word for “do research” and was built to demonstrate the capabilities and power of Silverlight.

Channel 10 has an interview with Marc Mecuri of the Platform Incubation Team on the Tafiti team. This interview by Larry Larsen gives a good overview of the workings and capabilities of Tafiti.

Because Silverlight is a browser based technology, Tafiti works on any browser and platform supported by Silverlight.

Using Tafiti

Using Tafiti is as simple as using any search engine. Start searching using Tafiti by entering a search term and clicking Go.

Search results are then displayed

The carousel can be used to switch between types of search results such as feeds, books, web, images or news. Clicking the different icons in the carousel will display search results of that type.

The following are the search result types for the term Silverlight displaying Feeds, Images and News results.

Any search results can then be added to the right hand column called the shelf, which is highlighted. Items on the shelf can be clicked to for easy recall later.

Results can also be displayed in a Tree View

Using Tafiti, you can search on single or multiple topics, and then add content you find interesting to the shelf. Content on the shelf can then be reviewed further at a later time.

Summary

Tafiti is an excellent demonstration of the power and capabilities of Silverlight. Tafiti was created by a team of less than 5 people, which demonstrates very rich applications can be created without a huge development team. I look forward to seeing what other mashups will be created using Silverlight in the future.

Technorati Tags: Tafiti, Silverlight, Microsoft, Live Search, Marc Mecuri, Larry Larsen, Channel 10, RIA