i know gnome and kde have their ugly solutions to network browsing, (ok thunar got itself a vfs too, i hope it doesnt get overweight). however, i think the ultimate answer lies in the *nix philosophy. everything is files, so is your network. i've been using fusesmb to mount my local network shares for quite a long time, with no problems. i even have it in my fstab.

and i have seen many comments around saying only fault of thunar is lacking of network browsing. theoretically speaking, its not thunar's concern, it's a matter of mounting your shares. however, this requires some text mode work for the time being.

so here i suggest: add fusesmb to auto-mount features already found in thunar via thunar-vfs.

here is a pseudo-phyton-code of my idea:

if smbd is not in processes:      //check thru xfce-taskmanager code? or simply ps aux?
   return
if fusesmb in mtab:
   add drive icon to thunar sidebar
   return

mount fusesmb /media/network
add drive icon to thunar sidebar