You may have noticed that your other folder windows have a similar icon in front of their names. You may have even noticed that document windows in various programs have icons (miniatures of their finder icons) in front of their window names, too.
These are all "proxy icons". You can drag the icon itself (press on it, pause a moment, then you can drag it) instead of closing the Finder window and dragging the folder icon. So, for instance, if you're looking in a folder MyOldDocs and decide you want to trash it, you don't have to close the window and then drag the folder to the trash - you can drag the proxy icon instead. It's a convenience. (You can drag the proxy icon of one Word document into another Word document, for instance, and all the info from the first doc goes into the second one. Or, you can drag the proxy icon of, say, a PDF file right into a mail message window, and that attaches that document to the email message.
The purple icon in an active Search window doesn't work as a proxy icon because it makes no conceptual sense: you'll have a list of items from various places that meet your search criteria - the window isn't a folder that you can move anywhere. But it keeps the interface look consistent, and there's a reason it's purple with that little cog: that's the icon for a Smart Folder, one that saves the searches you've made that you want to use again. (Say you like to look at all the Word documents you've modified this week - you do a search, save the search, and from then on it's a Smart Folder that constantly updates the "contents" (really just a list) to match the search criteria.
When you open a Smart Folder, the proxy icon behaves the way a proxy icon should - you can drag it onto the desktop, into another folder, or into the trash - that's because it's a
real folder once you've saved it.
Hope this clears up the purple folder icon question, if not the more philosophical issues brought up otherwise in this thread!
s.
