Saving Settings
You can specify different View menu settings for an individual folder. To do this select View Adjust View Properties..., change the View settings in the dialog to whatever you want. Then apply the view properties to the Current folder. Doing this creates a .directory file in that folder to hold the folder View settings. Use this dialog again to remove the folder specific settings (or just delete the .directory file).
One nice use of this feature is if you have a folder full of pictures, you can set that particular folder to display thumbnails of the pictures (by choosing the View Mode Icons and Preview from the View menu) when you open it, while not displaying images as thumbnails in other folders.