Nice.

To make that more discoverable might I suggest also adding this under the right-click menu?

(Which is where I was looking for it)

No, it should only be brought up once.  And the selection should apply to all the others after that.

As a matter of fact I find that I always want the 'Compare Before' option.

Not sure when I would use the 'Compare After' option.

But that may be because I have not yet used SmartGit long enough.