Aren't the "view" links on the Order Manager page redundant? Seems to do the exact thing as clicking on the order number?

A much better use for this column would be to include an email template drop-down.

The 'view' link is consistent with the admin UI (i.e. action buttons are on the right of each row), so if anything is redundant it's the order number link. That said, removing the 'view' link would buy some room to do something else, though I'm not sure that an email template dropdown would be it. If that were to be added it should probably be done as a batch operation like the "Batch Update Checked Orders" dropdown.