Sam, thanks for the reply - a question as an aside if I may; 'changelogs for your site? Start one and you can retrace our steps'. I understand the concept you're talking about but this process (of monitoring changes) is not one I'm familiar with, how would I do this? It reads as if its a background monitoring tool, am I understanding this correctly?
Re.: the disappearing upload box;
I've since posted an entry into the blog and it seems as the "preview" I mention above is actually inserted into the section where the upload dialogue should be.
I say this because, during the course of writing the entry the 'true' preview appeared at the bottom of my page, and was scrolled to correctly when clicking the "preview" hyperlink in the tope right-hand corner of the write-entry page.
I was working with installing the Flickr Photo Album for WP plugin from http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/photo-album/
Curiously that plugin is not working for me; failing at the very last step where it /should/ be displaying a tab in the file dialogue labelled 'Photos'
...AHAH!! if I deactivate the plugin the dialogue box returns; amazing what some sleep can do to your thinking! ;)