Many other CMS's give the user the option to alter the sorting and sort-direction on the contents of all instances (objects) of container content classes (e.g "Folders" and "Smart Folders"/"Collections" in Plone for example).

In eZ at the moment, all you can do is to set the sort order and direction at the class definition level which is obviously not very flexible if you want different folders in different sections/areas of your eZ site, ordered differently.

Please see this thread with an easy template fix for website_toolbar.tpl that does exactly this:

http://ez.no/developer/forum/setup_design/user_control_over_folder_sort_order/

Steps to reproduce

See:
http://ez.no/developer/forum/setup_design/user_control_over_folder_sort_order/ for relevant discussion and template-code.