The browsing of iTunes shares is definitely super lame, but I don't want to give the impression that the tracks aren't in any kind of order...

Once the track listing has been downloaded (that's the other pain in the ass), you can sort by the various columns normally displayed at the top of your track listing. So while you can't change views, you can still generally scroll through the list in some meaningful order. The positive here is that you can still triple-click the ALBUM heading which will change it to "Album by Year" which will first sort the list by Artist, then the tracks of each album in track number order, where each album is listed consecutively by its year of release. There are no separators between albums and there's no artwork visible. This is the lack of grouping and views I mentioned.

These are actually the same limitations as when browsing music on a connected iPod. And together, I consider them the weakest points in iTunes and a clear demonstration of lack of consistency in UI design.

Oh, you CAN see the artwork of the currently playing track in the pop-up artwork display area on the far left of the window, under the source list. But it's impossible to see the artwork for tracks that are not playing, even if you "Get Info" on a track.

With my master music collection containing over 27000 tracks, it actually brings in the track listing in a respectable time. It took about 25 seconds in a test I just performed.