Cover Flow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 The Cover Flow interface |
|
| Developed by | Jonathan del Strother, currently developed by Apple |
|---|---|
| Latest release | RC1.2 (1.997) / September 11, 2006 |
| OS | Mac OS X, Windows (iTunes), iPhone OS (iPod touch, iPhone) |
| Type | Music Software |
| License | Apache License |
| Website | [1] |
Cover Flow is an animated, three dimensional graphical user interface integrated within iTunes, the Macintosh Finder, and other Apple Inc. products for visually flipping through snapshots of documents, website bookmarks, album artwork, or photographs.
Cover Flow is browsed using the on-screen scrollbar, mouse wheel or by selecting a file from a list, which flips through dozens of pages to bring the associated image into view. On iPod and iPhone devices, the user slides their finger across the touch screen or click wheel.
[edit] History
Cover Flow was invented by artist Andrew Coulter Enright[1], and originally implemented by an independent Macintosh developer, Jonathan del Strother.
Cover Flow was purchased by Apple Inc. in 2006, and its technology was integrated into its jukebox application, iTunes 7.0, which was released September 12, 2006.[2] The name was previously "CoverFlow" without a space. The last release of Steel Skies’ stand-alone application, version RC1.2, was released the day prior, September 11, 2006. It was freely distributed for that day only, but remains available for download from MacUpdate. On January 9, 2007, Apple announced that the iPhone (EDGE and 3G) would incorporate Cover Flow technology. During the WWDC Keynote on June 11, 2007, Steve Jobs announced that Cover Flow would be added as a view option in Leopard’s Finder. On September 5, 2007 Apple announced that Cover Flow would be utilized in the third generation iPod nano as well as the new iPod classic and iPod touch models. Cover Flow has also been included with the public beta of Safari 4, which was released on February 24, 2009. Cover Flow in Safari is used to browse history, bookmarks, RSS feeds, Bonjour, and Address Book.
[edit] Other implementations
The Cover Flow interface has also been implemented on other operating systems. The open source media player Songbird offers a Cover Flow navigation add-on called MediaFlow.[3]
Using Compiz Fusion (Shift Switcher)[4] or KDE 4 (Cover Switch on KDE 4.1 or later)[5] on a Unix-like system, it is possible to switch between open applications with a Cover Flow animation.
A Cover Flow-like interface is used by the graphical search engine Search Me.
The free jukebox firmware Rockbox also implements a Cover Flow-like album art viewer, called "PictureFlow". However, PictureFlow is not part of the main UI, instead included as a demo.
[edit] References
- ^ "Dissatisfaction Sows Innovation". The Internet Archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20051225123312/thetreehouseandthecave.blogspot.com/2004/12/dissatisfaction-sows-innovation.html. Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
- ^ "Apple Purchased CoverFlow For iTunes 7". http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/13/1131238.
- ^ "Songbird MediaFlow Add-on". http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/238.
- ^ http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/Plugins/Switcher Plugins/Switcher] (Compiz Fusion Wiki), accessed 2007-10-29.
- ^ Cover switch effect (Martin Graesslin, YouTube video)
