Can I have QuickLook show me the contents of folders?

Ah, another fan of Quick Look. As someone who works with a lot of graphics files, between screen captures and photographs, I have become a huge fan of Quick Look and am always interested in what it can and can't do.

Not sure what QuickLook is? Oh man, you are going to love this feature, and if you're not a Mac person you are going to be super-envious of its easy and simpllicity!!

You need to be running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), but assuming you are, simply click on a file in the Finder (just once, not twice) and then press the spacebar. That's QuickLook.

While looking at a folder that contains a bunch of photos, for example, here's what I see:

Now, with that one photo of the dog selected, I press the space bar, and thanks to QuickLook, here's what I see on the screen:

Very slick, eh? No delay to have an application launch, no worry about image format compatibility, just a nice preview feature built-in to the operating system.

Problem is, as you point out, when you look at a folder, here's what you see:

Not so useful. Luckily, someone's figured out how to write a Quick Look extension that solves this problem, an extension logically called Folder List Quick Look.

To install it, simply download the "Folder.qlgenerator" file (latest version), then drag the file "Folder.qlgenerator" into either /Library/QuickLook if you want it to be available for everyone who uses your computer, or ~/Library/QuickLook if you just want it for yourself.

Now I found that I had to log out of my account and log in again for the plug-in to be seen by the OS, but once I did, here's what I now get when I click on a Folder then press the spacebar:

Nice!

While we're at it, my favorite Mac software directory, Versiontracker.com, lists an even dozen QuickLook plugins if you really want to trick out your Mac.