I agree, and can't resist mentioning on of my favourite ideas here:
It's weird to have the "documents and templates" dialog as well as the
"file open dialog". They need to be merged into on dialog, which can
act as central instance for dealing with (aka
opening/saving/selecting) files.

Reassigned to Bettina.

To achieve the same functionality StarOffice 5.2 had with the integrated Desktop
the Open File Dialog needs to:
-be resizable allowing to preview the documents in a readable size
-have a preview that is scrollable
Additionally some zoom functionality would be nice.

OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request.

The Issue you raised is currently 'Unconfirmed' pending review, but has not been
updated within the last 3 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the
latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed.
Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html
or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing):
http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/
 
Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as
necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also
wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have
advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi
 
Many thanks,
Andrew
 
Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of:
~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html

To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements". 

AOO use this dialog from operating system.
Since Tools / Options menu, uncheck "Use OpenOffice dialogs" in General tab.

But under Windows, preview is not available (see issue 107602).