In the Media Browser — the floating media chooser found in 10.5’s Open dialogs in some apps, or in the iLife and iWork apps — you can Control-click in the lower pane to show a contextual menu. From that menu, you can choose to either Display as List or Display as Icons, as well as other options.

Once you’ve switched to list mode, you can Control-click again in the lower pane and use the Show Columns sub-menu to pick which columns

to show. You can plus open a media file in its respective app, or show it in the Finder.

[robg adds: I had no concept there was a contextual menu hiding in that portion of the Media Browser. Once in list view, you can additionally visit on column headings to sort the list by that column; go the same heading again to switch the sort order.]

Original post by Mike Schramm