ETA: after changing sort order, you will need to close your browser and re-open to start a new session. The sort order is tied to a session variable in order for the front-end sorting via pulldown to work across all albums when a user re-sorts using this method.
What a strange bug! Browser close/re-open doesn't seem to be required when changes are made to the collection or album sort order; just the image sort order.
I have added the necessary code to the current codebase to get this to work when changing the options without doing a browser session restart as of Revision 614. It should be working correctly in the next release.
How does the date order work, exactly? I've noticed it sets the date of a picture to the EXIF_date_taken date if it's available, and the date_added if EXIF isn't available, but if you have a few pictures, some with the EXIF date, some not, it doesn't seem to put them in the right order.