Carousel View Better Than Cover Flow For The Finder?

Question

Carousel View Better Than Cover Flow For The Finder?

I have been using my .Mac Web Gallery quite a bit lately and I love the new and improved Carousel view. Apple keeps updating it (they added reflections, a nice play/pause scroll bar, and now you can use the scroll wheel (or ball) on your mouse just like Cover Flow in iTunes and the Finder) making it better and better and it has gotten to the point where I think it would make a lot more sense (and look nicer) for Apple to implement it in the Finder in place of Cover Flow. Cover Flow works perfectly for iTunes still (as that's what it was intended for) and I think that it's "Ok" in the Finder in Leopard, but now that Apple has cleaned up the Carousel view so much in the .Mac Web Gallery, I can see it looking PERFECT in the Finder in Leopard. For anyone who's used or seen the Cover Flow view in the Finder, you'll realize what I mean when I say that it's "Ok". The problem with it is that most of the dynamically generated icons in Leopard are not nice squares like the albums in iTunes so the icons off to the sides of the center one look skewed and distorted. The Carousel view would fix that problem while retaining the benefits of the Cover Flow view and, from what I can see, would actually enhance the benefits because the side icons would be easier to see as they are not skewed. All I'm suggesting is for Apple to swap out the Cover Flow view in the Finder for the Carousel view and then the Finder would really SHINE! So, my question to any of you is, "Would you vote for the Carousel view to replace the Cover Flow view in the Finder?" Please let me know any of your ideas or suggestions. Thanks.

PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.1), single 1.8 GHZ G5 — 2.5 GB of RAM

Posted on Feb 9, 2008 7:09 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Cre8ivePro

Level 1

5 points

Feb 14, 2008 4:27 AM in response to Design Macster

Yes! Image is everything, especially when cover flow wont preview folders that have personalized icons... I just see a blank space as if nothing's there... In addition, Pages 08' wont play nicely... Your beautiful layouts are mashed up when Quick Look throws the images to the bottom of the page then reformats the text into a 'hot mess'... I can't bear the look of it... yet the .Mac Web Gallery is brilliant!

You've got my vote Carousel Crusader,

Dolshea, +Cre8ivePros.com (coming soon)+

P.S. To drum up more views, you may consider reposting under a new title such as: MyCover Flow Woes, MyCover Flow Needs Help, Are you having CoverFlow issues? etc... just a suggestion from the strategist in me...Good Luck D.Macster!!!

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 14, 2008 9:09 AM in response to Cre8ivePro

I made a newer post about this same topic (trying to be a little more strategic) and this time I included a link to a video demonstrating my point. Here's the post http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6574743#6574743.

I couldn't agree with you more on the custom folder icon issues. I'm beginning to find out what the problem is on that. I have used the newest version of Candy Bar for my Home directory icons and that works fine, but there are some folders that I want to use a different icon for and leave the rest as they are. Candy Bar can't do this for me (as it only works with the generic icons) and so I used Apple's Icon Composer application (in the Developer Tools) to make the correct icon sizes for Leopard and then saved them as .icns but then copying and pasting that on a folder would result in the default ICNS icon and not my custom icon (that was under 10.5.1). So I finally got the custom icon to appear, but it only works for sizes 128x128 and lower, even though I put a 512X512 version in there. That's why it doesn't show up in Cover Flow. For some reason, Leopard "blacks" out anything larger than 128x128 on "Cut and Paste" icons. I found that out by copying my custom icon from the Get Info panel and then opening that in Preview and it shows a black background for the larger icons instead of the alpha channel. I'm still trying to figure this out. Also, IconBuilder seems to be doing the same thing (making and ICNS file) but it seems to work better. I haven't used that since I've upgraded to Leopard but from what I've read it should work, but I don't have Photoshop right now. Well, thanks for posting and agreeing with me on the Carousel view and I hope you check out my video. Thanks.

Reply

Answer 3

Feb 14, 2008 9:16 AM in response to Design Macster

I'm combining my newer post with this one because the newer post just got buried. Here is my newer post:

"I've been using my .Mac Web Gallery a lot lately and Apple has continued refining their Carousel view. They've added reflections and a nice play/pause scroll bar, and now you can use the scroll wheel (or ball) on your mouse just like in Cover Flow in the Finder and iTunes. Well, it's gotten to the point where I say it would be a lot more useful (and nicer looking) if Apple would replace the Cover Flow view in the Finder in Leopard with Carousel view. The reason I say this is because Cover Flow was meant for album artwork and looks perfect for that purpose, but there are several icons in Mac OS X that are not squares and have a 3D look and feel to them that get skewed when using Cover Flow in Leopard. I propose that Apple should just swap out Cover Flow with their own Carousel view and leave Cover Flow in iTunes where it was meant to be. I've put together a simple video demonstrating my point and you can view it here… http://gallery.mac.com/designmacster#100127"

Reply