Inspector

I don’t know whether this has been discussed or not, although I suspect others have wished for the same thing, namely:

Integrating the Inspector window in the main window.

I’d add that I’d like to see the Inspector show the path of the document. Often enough, the ‘Container’ name doesn’t tell me quite where the item is. Of course I can choose ‘Reveal in Container’ but then I’ve lost my place in the Record viewer. And besides, it’d be nice to see this info more quickly.

I tend to have multiple browser windows and libraries open, and in that case integrating the inspector would waste a lot of space. However, I realize that there are also use patterns in which having it integrated would be useful. So this should probably be an option.

Where?

Are you aware that the records list has tooltips that show the path? And that you can make tooltips show immediately by holding down Shift?

I imagine a button to show/not show inspector so it wouldn’t have to waste space, no?

Where?

Ah. Is space a concern? Perhaps just below URL. Or at the bottom of window. I don’t think I care so much where. (By the way, the manner of Spotlight is quite elegant: sequence of expandable folders at bottom of screen.)

Are you aware that the records list has tooltips that show the path? And that you can make tooltips show immediately by holding down Shift?

I didn’t know about the Shift key. This does speed things up enough to make the tooltips worth using for this. I confess that I pretty much gave up on them for this purpose because of the lag time. But now this is much better. Thanks

Right. Still, hiding and showing a pane doesn’t work as well as hiding and showing an inspector window (due to the way it affects the other content in the window). So I think the info pane would be most useful when shown most of the time, and that’s what wastes space with multiple windows.

Yes, vertical space is a concern, and the Spotlight folder path widget needs a pretty wide window to work well, which the Info inspector typically isn’t.