One of the first things I wanted to do after launching SN 7 was hide the new Find panel. I became aware that, unlike in previous versions of SN, where the panel with similar contents that slid out from the left side pushed the sky view over, this new panel was overlaying the sky view and thus hiding a portion of it. It makes the sky view cramped. I kept feeling the need to scroll the hidden portion of the sky view over so I could see what I was missing over there.
My initial instinct was to hover on the left edge of the Find panel to get the resize cursor, and then resize it away to nothing, but that didn't work. I looked in the View and Window menus to see if there was a Hide/Show Find Panel option, but there was not. I tried clicking the X in the right corner of the search text field (which only appears when there is text in the field), thinking that would make the Find panel go away, but it did not. I tried clicking on the 3-bar icon (the hamburger icon?) to the left of the search text field to see if there was an option in the menu to hide the panel, but there was not.
I just today figured out that there is a Close Find Panel item in the Edit menu, bound to cmd-opt-F. It's a bit odd because that item is always enabled, even when the Find panel is closed; and it only closes the panel, it doesn't toggle between close and open; and the Find menu item (cmd-F) does actually open and close the Find panel, so the Close Find Panel item seems redundant.
Because the new Find panel (Universal search panel?) overlays a significant part of the sky view (at least on a laptop screen), I'd prefer it to be hidden by default, but come up as soon as you search for something. I'd like hitting the X in the search text field to then hide the panel again. This is how many Mac OS X apps work--for example, Maps. I also think there should be another way to hide/show the find panel--maybe an item in the View menu, or in the menu that drops down from the 3-bar icon next to the search text field (by the way, that menu looks very different from the other menus that drop down from the other 3-bar icons).
