Using Bridge to View iDisk Contents

I often have to find a particular image or document on a remote drive. especially ftp types, and I was wishing the other day that my otherwise wonderful ftp client (Transmit) would just give me thumbnails so I could visually find the picture I wanted without having to download the whole folder to look for it. Today, I realized that I could (sort of) make that happen in Bridge. If I'd already had my iDisk available in the Finder, then Bridge could access the contents thereof and give me previews. So, I could point Bridge at the folder of samples from say Harold Davis's new book, and find the one with poppies on it without having to download the whole book.

I could actually get thumbnails of the PDFs that were in my iDisk Public folder.

So I tried it with a mounted ftp drive, and well, let's just say it probably would have been better to download the whole folder and look for the image I wanted. Some previews were created in Bridge...eventually. But I really didn't understand what mysterious factor was making that happen for some of them and not others. And then, the beachball started spinning and Bridge needed to be restarted. Apparently, Windows (Vista) users have a similar experience.

But a real answer can't be far off. Perhaps an intrepid O'Reilly Digital Media Community member might have a thought?

(And, by the way, let me just say that we got a preview copy of Harold's book in the office this week and it's beautiful. It should be in stock in April, and we'll have a limited quantity at Photoshop World if you stop by the booth.)