Elementary Needs You: What To Call Nautilus’ CoverFlow View?

By , Published February 18, 2010

The Elementary-Nautilus team are trying to decide what to call their “CoverFlow” view in Nautilus and they need your help.

See the image above? Well like me you probably call it CoverFlow in your head but since that name is all trademarked and stuff by Apple it can’t actually be called that. So what do you call it?

CoverView? SlideFlow? CoveryGloobusyFile… thingy?

Vote in the poll and help shape the future!

Image courtesy of MastroPino
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Zoom Slider Coming to Nautilus Elementary
  2. Nautilus Just Got Gorgeous
  3. Clutter-Flow Is A CoverFlow Plugin For Banshee
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • Anonymous

    FileFlow kinda flows, ill go with that
    dang apple with copyrighting all the good “cool” names

  • kadath

    “FruitCloneFlow” seems pretty appropriate, to be honest.

  • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

    I voted for CoverFlow even though it’s trademarked. We apparently can’t come up with any unique designs; why should we try to come up with a unique name? I mean, really, is there no creative way to display large previews of files? Do we really need to copy everything Apple does down to the design/animation?

    • rAX

      +1

    • Anonymous

      your saying “we” like your developing the program. the people who made coverflow made it cause they wanted the feature in nautilus there not jamming it down anyone’s throat. its not default in any distro and its unlikely that it will be. if you want to see a revolutionary new previewing program learn a coding language and make one

      • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

        I’m using “we” to mean the Linux community, as this is a project designed and developed for/with the community. Don’t patronize me by telling me to learn a programming language; I regularly use a variety of programming languages in my work. But really, this is hardly an issue of programming and more an issue of design. I’d be happy to propose alternative designs if they’d be interested. But the fact is, they don’t seem interested in alternative designs, because the Elementary project is in many ways a tribute to OS X.

        • Anonymous

          Okay, I’ll feed the troll. Can you please explain and/or post mockups of your ideas?

          • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

            Gladly; just give me a few hours to get my ideas into a more concrete format… And I honestly don’t mean to troll. I love much of the work that the Elementary project does (I’m using your gtk and modified nautilus right now), but I really think a line needs to be drawn on how far the OS X mimicking is going to go. Many of the Elementary modifications to Nautilus are stellar and will hopefully work their way back into Nautilus proper, but this CoverFlow is crossing a line for most users who aren’t trying to make their Linux box look like OS X. Functionally, it has value, but design could benefit from a little imagination.

            Sorry you think I’m trolling, that really wasn’t my intention.

            [Edit: and I think you're misrepresenting the idea of "trolling." It would be trolling if I would criticize your work in an unhelpful way in the Elementary Forums. Criticizing work here, in a neutral location, and offering help if it's requested hardly falls into the category of "trolling"]

          • http://ammonkey.posterous.com/ ammonkey

            Actually the coverflow view is just a start we have 2 more views to implement in clutter mode and one of them could even replace the icon view but it’s a big work. To get an idea of what i am talking about, here is a video of an experimentation called gloobus on fire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHHSOdVG2t4

            we are always open to suggestions/discussions, if u have mockups or ideas contact us, or come talking about it on irc freenode #gloobus or #elementary

          • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

            @ammonkey, glad to see there’s a solid batch of innovation to go along with this new code. :) And more than anything, I’m glad there’s a project bringing some much-needed changes to Nautilus. I might come visit you in irc, but I’ve already devoted most of my free time to other open source projects, and sadly I don’t have an endless supply.

            @danrabbit, I really admire quite a bit of the work you do – I frequently check your deviantART page – but I’m a little disappointed in how you handled my comment. Attempting to devalue a a dissenting opinion by publicly declaring its author a “troll” isn’t far removed from trolling itself, is it?

          • Anonymous

            Oh, okay. I see what you did there. You don’t actually have any ideas and you’re upset because I called you out (and a couple others did too). So now you’re backtracking and trying to make me look like the bad guy? lol

          • http://twitter.com/NtynRuben Ruben Verhack

            I do understand Michal Martin-Smucker. Don’t go declaring troll-wars too fast, he obviously has some knowledge.

            Oh, and on topic: I chose ‘Carousel’, it’s simple and represents it correctly in my opinion.

          • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

            Honestly you’re going to revert to name-calling (calling me a troll) and then expect me to contribute to your project? You can’t possibly be serious. My contributions to any OSS project are voluntary; contributing to your project after you publicly insult me is like expecting me to be an angel.

            Despite your rude attitude toward me, I just complemented your work and your project, and you responded by claiming I don’t have any ideas. I had mad respect for you, but it’s dwindling pretty fast.

          • David

            I’m a fan of your work and I’m glad you and your team are contributing so much to ubuntu. The designs you guys have made have certainly turn ubuntu into a better looking distro right now; having said that I must say I’m perplexed by your responses to Michael. I found them very immature and in turn unprofessional.

            I recognize that you are a young lad and I admire your work even more due to that fact but you must have in mind that the more your work grows in popularity the more you’ll be exposed to dissenting and even insulting opinions from others. The way that you handled Michael’s opinions shouldn’t be the norm when it comes to cases like this. It portrays you like an ignorant, arrogant boy who can’t handle a bit of dissent. I know you aren’t like that and that’s why I exhort you to think about how you respond to others on “public” websites before hitting the post button.

            Again, don’t take this the wrong way; I’m taking the time to say this only because I admire your work and I hope the best for you, if I didn’t care about your work I wouldn’t take the time to give you my thoughts about this.

            keep up the good work and thank you for making my desktop look amazing

  • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

    I voted “Carousel,” glad to see it’s winning. “CoverFlow”‘s usage has stretched beyond its original meaning; you’re not even looking at “covers” in this view. Most of the other names on that list are either too cumbersome/unnatural, or too literal-minded and drab: two of three naming trends that are plaguing the FOSS community (the other being goofy/nonsensical/unpronounceable names). I was going to try to come up with my own, but I don’t think you can do much better than “Carousel.”

    • http://www.google.com/profiles/jackyalcine Jacky Alcine

      Carousel’s fantastic!

  • bautz

    FlipFlow is my entrance

  • trotil

    Hmmmmmm….. maybe “VieWings”????

  • brypie

    I opted for “File Flicker”

    What do I win? ;-)

  • Anonymous

    Name it whatever, the feature itself is the important part, and more importantly, how could we get this on our machines?

  • Anonymous

    SlippyGnome?

    • http://louistaylor.wordpress.com/ louis taylor

      That just sounds wrong :(

  • http://ndrw.me AndrewNoNumbers

    I’m quite surprised that Carousel is in the lead. I guess I’m not the only one who dislikes CamelCase names. Actually, I don’t mind CamelCase in product or business names, but it’s just a bit overdone for a little software feature.

  • Bojan Gavrovski

    I would go with SlideView. It shows the files in a form of slides… and it “slides” them :)

    • trevorl

      I like this suggestion. It also makes sense if a slide gesture is used on a touch screen to move between files. And also a play on the phrase ‘side view’.
      A single word alternative could be Slider.

  • zacH

    As commented on the poll itself, I thought up one of my own… “dex”. Nothing spectacular, but it seemed to fit, and was simple. I picked it because it reminds me a bit of a rolodex (different animation, but hopefully that makes sense).

    Technically it could also stand for DYNAMIC INDEX, but I think that’s not terribly accurate, and has probably been thought up before by someone else. Oh well. Maybe someone will like it. I like naming things.

  • Anonymous

    My vote is for either of the following as I don’t really like those already mentioned:
    1. AlbumFlow
    2. Jukebox (or JukeboxFlow)

  • http://www.linuxmint.com/ Jimbo

    By Clutter do you mean Clutterflow?

  • https://me.yahoo.com/a/tXYdRB5gmOEQLpV1RBqtYYfSXiA-#37263 Jr

    Why not just ‘flip view’?

  • Jeff

    I picked MediaView because it’s very clear about what it does. :)

    Although this really looks great, I’m sad to see they didn’t go for something new. Instead of copying Apple 1:1, they could’ve shaken it up a little bit. CoverFlow has a good design, but it isn’t the only (or best!) option, IMHO.

    Still though, looks awesome. And I love my little Nautilus so much. ^^

    (Disclaimer: I have never owned an Apple product. No fanboyism here. :D )

  • http://billishere.deviantart.com Billi

    I would call it “clutterflip”… its a nice name!

  • Anonymous

    SlideFlow

  • http://www.bazinga.it/ marco bonomo

    Carousel +1

    Just one thing. I was checking out lucid lynx these days and i was asking myself if the elementary team is working on patching the new nautilus we’ll see on lucid.

    keep up the good work!

  • Connor

    What about something simple, like ‘Preview’?

    • Yi Sun-sin

      I like this : pretty simple and straightforward.

  • Anonymous

    Carousel is more is a more natural name for this view.

  • Thijsvdv

    How about “Flow”?
    Just keep it simple…

  • jone

    Vote for “Flipper”

    • hugmyballs

      A dolphin owns the rights to that.

  • http://olympusdigitalpen.blogspot.com/ dr. watson

    MediaFlow !

    Dan Rabbit, you are changing the playing-field my friend….

    • Anonymous

      Don’t blame it all on me! I just draw the pretty pictures. There are many amazing programmers behind the projects that I’m very lucky to be involved with :)

  • Anonymous

    1. File Matrix
    2. Magic Carpet

  • Anonymous

    My vote was for: Thumbnail-flow.

    And I like also Carousel.

  • hugmyballs

    Out of the preselected choices, ‘Carousel’ is the best at describing the view mode. The others are terrible in this respect, except ‘CoverFlow’ which is *okay*. Some other suggestions:

    1. Rotation View
    2. Rotation Preview
    3. Tile Preview
    4. Cover Preview
    5. Cover View

  • Anonymous

    FlOverview?

    I’m honestly torn between something catchy like the that, or just plain descriptive like Carousel, or Rotation Preview as suggested below.