As an alternative to the Finder and the Terminal, you can use Internet Explorer to browse the file system. Just type in file://local and you will see all files, including all hidden files. You can enter application directories (the ones ending in .app) if you want to. If you have different partitions, you might want to use file://local/volumes to access them.
If you do this in Safari, it will open a Finder window. In Netscape, it doesn't do anything (robg's note: In Netscape products, it should work with three slashes, as in file:///Applications).
I use this feature to access help files. I go to the application's folder, and search for a help folder. Most help files are plain HTML, so just click on one, and suddenly you can view the help files -- this is superfast compared to the Help Center.
[robg adds: We've run hints on browsing local files before, but I thought using the browser to both browse and open the help files was a unique concept.]

