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Once upon a time, there was a web IDE called Allaire HomeSite. One feature I really miss from that was it's equivalent of NetBeans' Project view. It was split vertically. The upper part contained nodes - for Java, it would be down to package names. Lower part contained leaves of the selected node in upper part. Here's a screenshot: http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/m/macromedia_homesite-67076-1.jpeg The whole idea is that the tree, when expanded, can get very tall, and user needs to scroll like hell. Scrolling sucks. From my experience, the HomeSite way much more convenient to use. In NetBeans, the parts could even be separate views; "leaves view" visibility would toggle with "nodes view" visibility. This view mode could be optional (editable in preferences). Thanks for considering.
Addition to the reasoning: The usual use case is: 1) user looks for a file in some package 2) so he needs to expand the package 3) user opens the file, or more files 4) the package contains many files, so it makes the list confused, it's hard to track the structure since one screen height can't fit whole project 5) So the user needs to close the package again and this repeats... With the split views, expanding, scrolling and closing would be replaced by two clicks. Because users are not interested in leaves when they are not looking for them at the moment, I could even imagine using only the nodes tree, and when a node would be clicked, a "popup panel" would appear (aligned with the nodes view) with the list of leaves. The popup would remain visible until it or the nodes view looses focus.
Nice, but we do not plan to create such feature. You can use Favorites if you would like to see the list of your favorite nodes...