Les
Coverflow looks like a very exciting interface. Well done Apple once
again! You could imagine an interface like this being important in
all sorts of repository contexts. For ebooks, for example, it could
bring back the serendipitous browsing experience.
John
On 29 Oct 2007, at 12:58, Leslie Carr wrote:
> There was a lot of hoo-hah last week about Apple's new operating
> system (leopard) that was released on Friday. I had a go at using
> some of its new browsing features (CoverFlow and QuickLook) to view
> a collection of material from a repository and it's a really
> convincing experience! It likes like a very good way to browse
> through a large collection of material - be it images, PDFs, word
> files, spreadsheets, posters, papers or whatever. Most information
> systems are designed to provide lists (indexes, tables of contents)
> of collections and up-close views of one item at a time; the new
> Mac features seem to break that distinction down and let the user
> browse (in the "shopping for clothes" sense of the word) the
> contents of your collection.
>
> Attached is a screendump of the use of the Mac Finder to view a set
> of reports and presentations from our student portfolio (EPrints)
> repository. You can check out http://www.eprints.org/software/
> EPrintsZipCoverFlow.jpg for a higher resolution version, and a
> video at http://www.eprints.org/software/EPrintsZipCoverFlow.mp4
> (I did try to upload a version to YouTube, but the quality becomes
> too degraded to see the animated interface.)
>
> <FinderScreenSnapz001_th.jpg>
>
>
>
> For those who aren't Mac or iTunes users, "cover flow" uses the
> visual metaphor of a stack of music albums that you flick through
> in a record store, so that you see the contents of the item (or its
> artwork) rather than inspecting a list of titles, bands, record
> labels and sundry metadata. When applied to a folder of documents,
> it means that you "flick through" a sequence of thumbnail views of
> the documents or files. (I say thumbnails - but the images may be
> 640 x 400 px or more!) It's difficult to describe, but it feels
> very natural to do, and it is much, much more useful than seeing a
> page full of icons!
>
> There seems to be a feeling that the desktop experience is going to
> get more interactive and more animated, so repository developers
> will probably want to keep their eyes out for new facilities that
> help their researchers. The SWORD activity will be a really great
> step towards integrating the researcher's desktop with repositories
> by allowing programs to handle deposits instead of humans. This is
> the opposite - a way for allowing humans to have better engagement
> with their repository contents.
> --
> Les Carr
John
--
John MacColl
Head, Digital Library 01316 513814 07742 424428
Edinburgh University Library www.lib.ed.ac.uk
|