Zoom in on an individual item?

Good Ideas 

Thanks hopi, that's a good idea to set it up so that Ctrl + or - will affect zoom. I'm also experienced in Photoshop and can see how that would be natural on Reaper too. I'll give it a shot. Thanks heda, I actually set that up already. Double click on an item goes to zoom selected. *I still like the idea of a floating window for audio item edits, by the way. I see no benefit (yet?) of having to affect the size of the entire work area just to zoom in on one item.

the problem using an external editor is that your changes are saved and there is no undo for it. but you have to look at the advantages of it too. if you are in doubt of the edits you are going to make.. duplicate the take first to another file to have a backup

No External Editor, Looking for Reaper-Exclusive Solutions 

This is a typical question for those coming from something clunky and horrible like Nuendo that actually requires such a window. Reaper works completely differently and there is no need for a window for looking at details of anything. All you have to do is place the mouse over the offending item and use the scroll wheel. Wheeee! And you are in as far as you want to go. Fiddle about and then pull the wheel back. In that way, you can rush from one edit point to another in seconds. According to where you place the mouse, the scroll wheel does different things and that makes working with Reaper faster than with anything else out there. Over the mixer, you scroll across the channels, Over the track-stems and you scroll up and down the tracks. Over the time-line and you zoom in and out from whole project to individual samples. And you can pull a track larger vertically, if you need to zoom in that way as well. Because of this zooming in and out ability, it is the only DAW that one can use easily on a laptop.

Just wanted to mention another zoom method which I find quite cool and seems to be not so well known. SWS drag zoom, part of SWS extensions, uses its own zoom history, un-zoom can be done with mouse gesture (drag mouse up a bit as seen in the screencap), clever stuff imo.

. . . and that is seriously elegant!

Good Tips 

You're welcome. Yeah, SWS extensions is a must (for me anyways) as it adds so many useful features. Couldn't imagine running Reaper without it anymore. :)

There have been calls for an edit window and perhaps someone is working on such a feature, but TBH, I wouldn't know what to do with such a beast, if we had one. I always lost the will to live with Nuendo, when I had to open an edit window, as the SW was so clunky and slow. Pushing the scroll wheel gives you exactly the same as an edit window, but without the window! As for readjusting the work-space, I am zooming in and out all the time. It needs getting used to at first, the ability to set the zoom in level to anything and instantly. But once you get used to the idea that you can go anywhere and do anything without looking at the keyboard or grubbing through pull-down menus, you will find yourself doing in minutes what used to take hours and completing projects in a day or two, that used to take a week.