Hi Mark,
Well actually I thought that "assuming the dialog isn't bigger than 640x480" was implied. I guess it wasn't. IIRC You yourself are always giving out that the file selector dialog is too small. I agree that these dialogs should have maximisers, but I also think that they should have a decent size by default.
In order to make the icon area larger, what about dropping the file names that take up lots of space in the current dialog? Couldn't that file name be displayed as a tooltip?
Stefan