Cover Flow was basically just document thumbnails as OpenGL textures. You’d still have to open the application for the document.
Raskin’s “leap” concept worked within the documents themselves. There was no separation between a document editor and a file browser or shell. A leap would take you directly to the content, and leaping enough times would bring you back where you started. But you never switched from “application mode” to “Finder mode”, so to speak.
