Cover Flow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (April 2009) |
 |
This article may require copy-editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (April 2009) |
 The Cover Flow interface |
|
| Developer(s) | Jonathan del Strother, currently developed by Apple |
|---|---|
| Stable release | RC1.2 (1.997) / September 11, 2006 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X, Windows (iTunes), iPhone OS (iPod touch, iPhone, iPod Nano 4th Generation) |
| Type | Music Software |
| License | Apache License[citation needed] |
| 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 was integrated into the fourth generation iPod nano by the use of an accelerometer which accesses Cover Flow when the iPod nano is turned on its side. Cover Flow has also been included with the public beta of Safari 4, which was released on February 24, 2009. The final version of Safari, released on June 8, uses Cover Flow 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 was 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.
As a result of these other implementations, Apple has said that Cover Flow is not a public API and is therefore reserved for its own use. Other applications which implement similar functionality do so at their own risk.[clarification needed][citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ "Dissatisfaction Sows Innovation". The Internet Archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20051225123312/thetreehouseandthecave.blogspot.com/2004/12/dissatisfaction-sows-innovation.html. Retrieved 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.
- ^ Plugins/Switcher (Compiz Fusion Wiki), accessed 2007-10-29.
- ^ Cover switch effect (Martin Graesslin, YouTube video)
