Cover Flow View
As you can sort of see from Figure 2-12, 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 2-12. The top half of a Cover Flow window is an interactive, scrolling “record bin” full of your own stuff. It’s especially useful for photos, PDF files, Office documents, and text documents. When a PDF or presentation document comes up in this virtual data jukebox, you can click the arrow buttons to page through it; for a movie, click the little ▸ button 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
button highlighted in Figure 2-12, 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 ...
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