[Toadling]

I'm all for easier ways to change the search scope (i.e. toggle between searching the current sidebar selection and the entire database). I sent in a similar feature request a while back.

But I don't want to lose the ability to search only a subset of my data. In fact, I tend to do subset searches a lot more often than global searches (partly because of performance and partly because I usually know which folder stuff is in).

The "search the current sidebar selection" behavior seems quite common on the Mac. That's how Apple Mail, iTunes, Address Books, and many others work. Third party apps (e.g. Yojimbo) also follow the same principle. Even the Finder can be configured to search only the current selection on Snow Leopard (can't remember what it does by default).

So Spotlight's behavior of searching everything by default might actually be the anomaly here. ;-)

-Dennis