It would be nice to be able to use MC to browse pictures without importing them or having to select them.
Currently, one item can be opened by double-clicking. Multiple items can be opened by selecting them and using the context menu. And an entire folder can be "browsed" using the same technique. So what is it you're suggesting, and how would it be implemented without messing up these existing capabilities?
MC is a media manager. As such, it does pretty much everything Explorer does, and does it better. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with using Explorer, and expecting some reasonable degree of integration. But if the choice is being made to use a file manager for some aspects of media management, then perhaps more should be expected from it. I use
Directory Opus for file management. It's rich feature set gives me a better choice of what part of my image management routine I handle in it, and that which I handle in MC. So, for example, I use it to download photos from my camera, cull the bad ones, and fix the orientation of the rest—all before importing anything to MC. If I didn't have DOpus, I might do everything in MC. But I wouldn't choose to use Explorer and then complain that MC's features aren't readily available.
Twice this last week I viewed someone else's photos on my computer using their USB flash drive.
Why not view the flash drive using
Drives & Devices? That would be much more efficient than using Explorer and Photo Viewer, especially if the purpose is to import some of the photos into the library.