I get so used to using the favourites in Dopus for navigation.
Now, outside of Dopus, when I'm in a 'save' dialogue in other programs, I'd like to have a favourite directories menu available.
I don't see how Dopus could do this as it's out of it's scope; Is there a tiny app for Windows 7 that does that?
Ah, the oldies but goodies. Sadly, whenever it has come up before the Opusmeisters have said that they can do many things but this, and walking on water, is not among them.
To deal with the issue that you raise I try as hard as possible to organise my data in ways that are "Libraries friendly". I often end up reaching destinations via the desktop and its Libraries link.
Not brilliant, but better than navigating Explorer style.
We've said we don't plan to replace the standard file dialogs, but getting access to the Opus favorites list in them is possible, and something some of the various dialog-enhancement tools already let you do.
(I don't know which one is best to recommend one, however. I personally only regularly need to use a handful of folders from those dialogs, so I use their built in editable list on their left edge.)
I always use DO to navigate to folders and files, copy the path by hotkey and paste it in the "Open/Save" dialog of the app in question, unless it supports dragndrop, than I just drag things over to open them. It's a pity the general open/save dialogs don't even support dragging items onto them to open a directory or file, as the filerequesters on the amiga did.
Creating/maintaining a tidy "Open With" context menu for specific filetypes also helps out here to prevent navigating the dumb-*ss windows default dialogs. But fwiw, the open/save dailogs on OSX (Mac) are even worth, don't ever try them, just a torture! o)
A lot depends on your work and what you want to get at.
A handful of places would be an easy one to handle. In my case I have many many thousands of PDF files in hundreds, if not thousands, of folders. (Thank god for indexing software.) I am always saving new files that I find out in webland.
Creating "favorites" to handle this is not feasible. Too many of them. Too volatile an environment. (I keep adding new locations.)
Using Libraries and Favorites can help in the navigation, but only to start drilling down to the required destination.
One of the more useful locations is "Recent places".
Unfortunately, Microsoft, in its wisdom, seems to be removing access to some of these navigation aids. Windows 8 does not show Libraries in the Navigation Pane, hence going via the desktop, where it does show.
It's seems like just customizing favorites in WIN 7 dialog is the easy way to handle this. I can just drag a folder there.
Still missing the ASL-replacements from Amiga. It's really funny, that in the 90's customizable file dialogue were possible.