When I’m working on a manuscript, I am concerned about searching for references in my EndNote library, I want to see what the reference looks like when formatted in the current style, and I often want to browse the PDF attachment. I almost never want to see the content of the individual fields of a reference unless I’ve found an error that needs to be corrected; in that case, it is convenient to double click on the reference in the list and edit the fields in the resulting separate window. So, for me the optimal layout in terms of screen geography (I usually have a manuscript and/or web browser open covering the other half of the screen) would be a vertical column layout, with the list of references on top, followed by a small area showing the appearance of the (last) selected reference using the current style, with a largish field at the bottom showing the PDF attachment of the (last) selected reference. However, this is not an available layout in EndNote X7 Mac! The closest I’ve seen to what I want is the so-called Bottom-Preview layout, which would be quite acceptable except that it doesn’t show the PDF, it shows the individual fields of the selected reference, plus the formatted reference.
Now, I do prefer the little menu to select layouts in X7 to the confusing little rectangly things of X6, so that’s a plus. But I’m still frustrated by not being able to get the layout I need.