Apple's Leopard Spotlight Sneak Peek page touts another feature: using Spotlight as an application launcher. Specifically, it notes that applications with names matching your search will always appear as top hits in the Spotlight menu. At first glance, this doesn't seem particularly impressive. After all, that's how Spotlight works now. However, Apple goes on to say that just hitting return will automatically open the application. Right now, while applications are shown as top hits if they match a search, they aren't automatically selected. What is selected is the Show All option that displays the Spotlight results. You can, of course, use the menu, the arrow keys or the mouse to navigate to an application and launch it.

Having the top hit be an application that's automatically selected allows you to enter the first few letters of the application's name, hit return and open it. This could be a great timesaver for launching apps you don't keep in the Dock, particularly those not at the root level of the Applications folder.

Note: As useful as this feature will be in Leopard, I've been using Spotlight as an application launcher already, albeit with one or two extra keystrokes to select the right application).

Quick Look

Quick Look, a new technology that will accompany Spotlight, allows you to preview the contents of files without opening them. That's a big help when searching for information because many files often have similar names, metadata and even content. While the Finder currently offers some preview capabilities for image and video files, Spotlight search results don't make use of that feature. Even the current Finder previews are small thumbnails.