Mark - i'm less concerned about the buttons thing than I am about specifying which webparts are there and in what order. If I load a QWP with a specific query, it will inherit whatever buttons that query has, right?

With a file webpart, even if our pipeline action does not show up on the button bar, at least it should be an option when you hit 'upload data'. Even if you cant customize per folder, it would be kinda nice to have a little more control site-wide, since 'upload images' has no use. Not sure why that specific pipeline gets a button on every files webpart when others do not.