Hello,

No matter this can be a flameable bug report, I would like to expose my argument againts the new GtkFileChooser layout.
Straight to the point:

- New layout eats too much space
Please compare:
gtk2.8: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/143/338188293_c03cc171bb_o.png
gtk2.10: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/137/338192945_96da052ae9_o.png

Going to the numbers:
1. In gtk2.8, 9 Places are shown, in gtk2.10, 6 Places are shown.
2. In gtk2.8, 8 file rows are shown in the selection pane, in gtk2.10 only 6 are shown.

Problems in the layout are:

a. An uneeded Places column title (note that I say _title_), 
You can't miss guessing that Desktop, Home, CD-ROM, etc are _Places_. That's like Putting a big GtkLabel saying "Buttons:" before the Open, Cancel buttons :). It just eats space.
- Suggestion: remove the Places column title

b. A lot of unused space in the far right corner,
Most of the time you open the FileChooser to pic specific items or to search in a specific location for those items. You do not _browse_ your file system on the FileChooser. You have a file browser for that and ls and cd in the worse case.
- Suggestion: put the navigation buttons like in 2.8, over the file selection pane , giving Places pane a whole extra row for itself.

c. Location entry is too big,
Similar to my previous point, if you have a path that big that you need the whole width of the FileChooser to type it, you better create a bookmark for the directory or control copy the path name.
Suggestion: Apply point (b)

d. Location entry and Navigation buttons are redundant,
Having two widgets for almost the same purpose is not a good idea. Consider why   does people open the location entry: to type a path. Consider why do we have the buttons: to navigate a path. A whole row of information is missed because of this.
Suggestion: Since location entry can do what navigation buttons can do, why don't convert the buttons into the location entry when Control+L is pressed and the opposite when Control+L is pressed again.


Other minor suggestions/ideas:
a. Make the location entry a popup again so we have the old neat behavior
b. Make control+H work :) (bug #344657)
c. Look at the screenshots, note the Character Encoding dropdown. Look how it has the width of the whole dialog. Don't you think it looks weird?

That's all I have to say :). I hope I gave enough arguments to make this a solid constructive critic and not just a rant-like bug ;).

Thanks for gtk+!