Cover Flow View The new, fourth view in Leopard is one of Apple's favorites; it's one of the handful of Leopard features that gets the most play in Apple's advertising and demos | . Cover Flow View The new fourth view in Leopard is one of Apple s favorites it s one of the handful of Leopard features that gets the most play in Apple s advertising and demos. As you can sort of see from Figure 1-23 Cover Flow is a visual display that Apple stole from its own iTunes software where Cover Flow simulates the flipping pages of a jukebox or the CDs in a record-store bin. There you can flip through your music collection marveling as the CD covers flip over in 3-D space while you browse. Figure 1-23. The bottom half of a Cover Flow window is identical to list view. The top half however is an interactive scrolling CD bin full of your own stuff. It s especially useful for photos PDF files Office documents and text documents. And when a movie comes up in this virtual data jukebox you can point to the little button and click it to play the video right in place. The idea is the same in Mac OS X except that now it s not CD covers you re flipping it s gigantic file and folder icons. To fire up Cover Flow open a window. Then click the Cover Flow button identified in Figure 1-23 or choose View as Cover Flow or press -4. Now the window splits. On the bottom a traditional list view complete with sortable columns exactly as described above. On the top the gleaming reflective black Cover Flow display. Your primary interest here is the scroll bar. As you drag it left or right you see your own files and folders float by and flip in 3-D space. Fun for the whole family The effect is spectacular sure. It s probably not something you d want to set up for every folder though because browsing is a pretty inefficient way to find something. But in folders containing photos or movies that aren t filled with hundreds of files Cover Flow can be a handy and satisfying way to browse. And now notes on Cover Flow You can adjust the size of Cover Flow display relative to the list-view half by dragging up or down on the grip strip area just beneath the Cover Flow scroll bar. .
