Safari, meet Cover Flow

I'm not sure why eye candy gets such a bad reputation-- we all need a little beauty in our lives, and no UI designer should ever argue that a "cool!" factor is a bad thing to have, when you've already hit all the other bases. Cover Flow is a perfect example. When people made their wishlists before iTunes 7, I don't know anyone that said they wanted a visual way to browse their albums. But everyone loved the Cover Flow plugin, and now those designers are working for Apple.

So Jimmy G has an idea: why not add Cover Flow functionality into Safari? You could browse updated versions of your bookmarks just like you browse your albums in iTunes. I'm not sure I'd implement it exactly the way he has (click the pic above to see a bigger version), as if I'm browsing my web visually, I'd rather more real estate was given to the pages themselves. But it's an interesting idea.

And I think we could use a little more color in the web browsing experience-- the space between the browser tabs, if you will. If you're a Firefox for Windows user you really should try out the Tab Effect**; it lets you flip between tabs like a rotating cube. It's actually a little much to use all the time, but it's a cool idea, at least. And the PicLens plugin for Safari also puts a little oomph in your picture browsing-- it can create slideshows of Flickr pictures with just a click. You may think it's superfluous (and yes, if your app doesn't function already, it is) but we all need a little bit of eye candy now and again.

Thanks, Jimmy!

**Whoops. As commenter Rae notices, Tab Effect is Windows only, because it requires Directx 8. But it's still a cool effect.

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Source: http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/169

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I'm not sure why eye candy gets such a bad reputation-- we all need a little beauty in our lives, and no UI designer should ever argue that...

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Mike

I had almost this idea when I saw coverflow applied to finder the first time, but my idea is to have coverflow show the actual opened pages instead of bookmarks....

July 30 2007 at 6:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

BuzWeaver

How about something a little more practical, you know, SORTING capability. What self respecting browser doesn't have a sorting (Ascending/Descending) capability?

July 30 2007 at 11:12 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

This reminds me of the Nokia series60 browser's (WebKit based!) history feature.

July 30 2007 at 10:57 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

arygaetu

http://g.shiira.jp/groups/board_show/561

July 30 2007 at 8:20 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I wish I could browse through my cable tv channels with Cover Flow. Maybe Apple TV could be turned into a cable tuner--not far-fetched in light of the new federal cable tv laws that recently went into effect.

July 30 2007 at 12:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris

Coverflow is optional on all uses, so what? Don't like it, don't use it! I like it and I want to have it nearly everywhere, so that's a cool idea! Apple do this please!

July 29 2007 at 5:02 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Buckeye77

just like we all got use to columns , i think that cover flow view should be an OPTION, not a mandate. I honestly think it would work well for me based on how i use safari with multiple tabs - some for work and some for surfing. It certainly doesn't have to be the default in safari, but i love the option.

July 29 2007 at 1:46 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

umijin

Puh-leeze! Less fluff and more stuff!

Leopard previews suggest Apple wants to iTunify the OS. We don't need that. We need better functionality without all this nonsense.

Apple should concentrate more on its portable hardware (now overweight and not energy efficient) than adding goofy flipping photos to its OS interface.

July 28 2007 at 9:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin

I think iTunes is bloated enough without coverflow, but then to say that everything should hav ecoverflow is crazy. Coverflow for finder is like organizing all of your icons into one row, making the icons the largest size they can be, all the while somehow taking up more memory when you can just look at at normally. It's pretty, but its not practical. With a 55gig iTunes library, things move slow enough as it is.

July 28 2007 at 6:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve Grenier

Oh man, I hope I'm not the only one here, but man do I hate Apple putting coverflow EVERYWHERE, I don't need it in Finder, I don't need it in Safari. I don't need it anywhere other than iTunes and even then its not very useful. On an iPod it is really amazing, but implementing it everywhere is so useless. I won't ever use it in Finder let alone if it were in Safari.

I think its a terrible idea.

July 28 2007 at 6:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply