I'm surprise that we arrived to the 3.0 gnome version without having a decent filechooser. gnome has not much thing to envy to Windows explorer but the filechooser and the choice to choose his view: 

--> big image preview (big thumbsnails)
--> icon
--> list

That is not a gadget but a very usefull feature. For example, you want to open an image with any image app or other apps. If you open a folder with several images it is a nightmare to find the one you want to open: gtkfilechooser don't have a preview for image, so you have to open nautilus to see the name of the image and then find it with the gtkfilechooser to open it. Or sometimes there is a preview pane in the gtkfilechooser (like in GIMP) but you have to click on all image untill you find the one you wanted...And if I would like to open the last modified file or the oldest one? WHere is the list pane? 

This is a video of the old Windows XP explorer filechooser, "souvenir":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PAQlgKujno

Thank you for your help to make a better Shell with a big S.

LGDN