New patch attached, for consideration as an alternative to the previous one.
They are the same except for the following new feature, which you might or
might not like:

The directory info line has mouse-face highlighting. Hitting RET or clicking
mouse-2 on it displays more info about the directory, in buffer *Help*.

This is what the *Help* display looks like:

 Properties of `c:/foobar':

 Type:                       Directory
 Permissions:                drwxrwxrwx
 Time of last access:        Sun Mar  2 00:00:00 2008 (Pacific Standard
Time)
 Time of last modification:  Tue Aug 21 19:21:00 2007 (Pacific Standard
Time)
 Time of last status change: Tue Aug 21 19:20:59 2007 (Pacific Standard
Time)
 Number of links:            1
 User ID (UID):              5
 Group ID (GID):             5
 Inode:                      26687
 Device number:              240391127

 [back]

Obviously, a different choice could be made for the time format. Just as
obviously, some of this info is already displayed in the Dired buffer,
unless you use `dired-details-hide' (did that ever get added to Emacs?) to
hide the details.

The help commands involved are general. I added them to files.el, but you
might want to do one or more of the following:

1. Move `describe-file' to help-fns.el (and bind it to, say, `C-h M-f').
2. Move `dired(-mouse)-describe-file' to dired.el.
3. Move `dired(-mouse)-describe-listed-directory' to dired.el.

The commands in #3 are used only in `insert-directory', however, so you
might prefer to keep them in files.el.