In the “finder” it would be nice if the icon changed based on the status of the page for a quick reference.
Could you clarify what you mean by the icon would change? What is the motivation for having the status information more visible? Are all statuses important or just some statuses? The pages by status gadget is designed to quickly find pages in a certain status. Why would this gadget not adequate for what you’re trying to do?
Any additional insight you could give us would be really helpful.
For example, instead of the paper icon next to a page that is archived maybe have a page icon with an archive symbol. Something that at a quick glance would let you know that that page was archived and not live.
I was just about to suggest this. The different status icons would help me quickly identify archived pages under a specific folder without having to individually click each page.