Working with Adobe Bridge can be intrusive or annoying, as it takes up the full screen and you have to switch back and forth between Bridge and Photoshop, or Bridge and your other CS applications. You can make the Bridge window smaller, but you still have to switch back and forth, and the small Bridge window doesn’t show content the way you might like.
Not to worry! Apparently the Adobe developers noticed the same thing, and in Bridge CS4, they have introduced a solution: Compact Mode. Switching to Compact Mode in Bridge shrinks the window, but does oh, so much more. In compact mode, the side panels are hidden, and the interface becomes much more streamlined.