I love the file dialogs in KDE! They are the first thing I show to people when advocating for KDE, as they really show off the benefits of a shared infrastructure (including the use of kioslaves).
They are also very easy to use. Thanks to the shortcuts you can put in the side bar and bookmarks in the drop-down menu you can quickly navigate to common locations.
But where are the corresponding features in the actual file browser, Konqueror? The closest thing seems to be the navigation panel, which has a much less direct interface; you can't just drag a bookmark or a folder there. And if you do create a new "folder" tab, that just opens up a tree view in the navigation panel, rather than acting as a direct short cut. Alternatively you could use bookmarks, but there is no separate set of those for file browsing.
Maybe I am missing something here, but should not Konqueror borrow a little from the file dialogs?
/ Martin