Firefox - why is it better?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 5/26/05, Rodd Clarkson <rodd at clarkson.id.au> wrote:
> My guess is that file selection is a tricky subject because everyone
> thinks about how to do things a little differently, so everyone wants
> there file selector to work a little differently.

Agreed.
  
> I'm actually quite happy with the GTK+ file selector, for what it's
> worth.  There's a few things (like big directories taking too long to
> appear) that bug me, but I think it's orders of magnitude better than
> the last file selector.  I love that all my mounts appear as a list and
> that I can just mount them there (instead of having to do it elsewhere
> and come back).  I can't wait until other applications figure that own
> out (for example gFTP).

I really dislike the current GTK+ file selector, even ignoring its
poor performance on big directories. But I disliked all other
renditions to some degree or another as well. I've always chalked it
up to taste and thus never complained.

Why not make the file selector another app entirely? This would make
it easier for there to be alternatives, plus it might fit in nicely
with SElinux. (i.e. the app could be prevented from having FS access
outside it's own files, but still have the ability to open user files
since the file selector could be trusted to only open files the user
actually selected, or only write to names the user selected).