http://intellij.net/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=266104&tstart=15

While this creates some duplication with the existing changes view, I think it is useful:

• It provides "context" and navigation that blends better with usual role of project view
• I have project view open much more ofter than changes view

If the feature is implemented as suggested, a nice touch would be to show the current changelist in bold in the "View as" dropdown.

An additional background description from Dave Griffith from the linked thread:
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To understand where we're going here, I think you need to examine the Mylar project for Eclipse. The core idea is that the IDE should help you maintain mental state as you switch between tasks. To that end, it implements a concept of "Contexts", which are basically sets of files you were interested in for a given task. Contexts are maintained automatically, and switching between tasks switches the IDE back to the context visible at the time the task was last used. There are a bunch of actions you can do with contexts (store them, share them, tie them to task tracking issues, search/analyze over them), but most of the value of Mylar can be gotten without that.

IDEA doesn't have contexts. It has favorites (no auto-update) and changelists (auto-update, cleaned on commit/remote run, only contains modified files rather than visited or open files) both of which are kind of close to being contexts, but not quite.

Basically where Taras and I are going is that changelists could be extended slightly, allowing their interaction with the project panel to be more context-like. The project panel is the main task "entry point", and there's a lot of value in making it context aware. The change list panel, while both essential and very nice, will never serve the same "entry point" need.
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