Extending nautilus' functionality

Nautilus (http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/)is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. It allows to browse directories, preview files and launch applications associated with them. It is also responsible for handling the icons on the GNOME desktop.GNOME people have spend too much time on file manager to make it perfect.
You can extend nautilus' capabilities using extra shell scripts available over internet.Extending like allowing nautilus to send shortcut of selected file to desktop, mounting and unmounting .iso files, opening selected files with root permissions, combining selected pdf files if you have required programs installed, changing format of media files etc etc.. 

Download these scripts and copy it to /home/yourusername/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ folder with appropriate permissions.You should check Readme files associated with these scripts on how to do it.I can't provide a generalized method. :-)

Some useful hits:

http://www.gnome-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=188

http://g-scripts.sourceforge.net/