Hey,
in gnome 2.22, gio and gvfs will start replacing gnome-vfs as the vfs layer of gnome. gio is part of glib, gvfs is a standalone module. I have now completed the builds of glib2, gvfs, eel2, nautilus and libgnomeui that bring gio and gvfs into rawhide.
Note that a few things are not working yet, e.g. authentication for remote filesystems, and the http/webdav backend is not there yet.
If you want to try gvfs in the file chooser, change /desktop/gnome/interface/file_chooser_backend to "gvfs".
Happy holidays, Matthias
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org