I like to use icon view as the graphical representation of the files allows for quick and easy recognition.
When I do a search, the screen splits and the results appear in the top part of the screen in a kind of list view (with a very small thumbnail that is too small to be functional).
Is it possible to have the search results in icon view? What Yep does (and what I think is better) is that the currently selected view is “pared down” to show only the search results. No splitting of the screen into separate windows. Then when the search is cancelled, all the files in that view appear again.