We’re happy to see Tafiti getting such a nice reception across the net. In general there are lots of good comments as well as excellent suggestions on how to make it even better. One thing in particular that we noticed was people commenting on the tree view. The comments have ranged from the “wow” variety to c|net calling it “borderline silly”. ;) Clearly we could have done a better job giving a sense for the intention of the functionality. I’m going to take a stab.

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. For example, as best I can tell, none of the commenters on the net noticed (or at least nobody mentioned) that 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.

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. Whether that’s something you want, or whether we are on path to delivering that is for each user to judge, but hopefully folks will get a sense for what we’re trying to achieve. Comments and questions welcome as always.