Seems to me both useful on the one hand, and potentially confusing for a novice on the other. I wonder how many non-tech users ever alt-tab anywhere for instance.

The restrictions in place on OS X's file open/save dialog at least keep the novice focussed on one thing at a time - and if you've ever supported a complete novice, you'll understand why I think that's a plus point.

On the specific point of which PDF did I mean, I'd probably switch to multi-column view because then you can see a preview of each file as you highlight it.

On the other points, I guess because I've been zooming around the Finder for so long I tend not to notice that kind of annoyance.

Though I do miss an old Classic MacOS extension that remembered all the recent folders you'd visited system-wide and gave you drop downs in the open/save dialog and loads of other useful things, similar to what you describe.

[Googles... Ah, "Default Folder" is what it was called - and there's a version for OSX]
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simon