Don't have it in front of me right now, but can't you hit CTRL+L to bring up the "address bar" and manually write the path there?
CTRL+L works in a lot of places to enter paths, from web browsers to local disk browsers.
1. it is not permanent, it disappears and never remember anything
2. it doesn't respect the paths (can't navigate)
3. i don't want to play a keyboard shortcuts game
That's just one of the issues i have with the Gnome Filepicker, there is also the mounted disks that appears like it's a mobile UX, and many more, i have a document with everything that i hate about it, but i'm not on my PC to share it, it is an UX disaster
I wish i could use Thunar as a filepicker, that would be perfect
I can save you the effort by reminding everyone that the GTK3 file picker is a significant setback from the Windows 98 filepicker, and it the amount of times I encounter it on Linux is beginning to feel like flagellation.
Low on details, extremely limited customisation options.
When I begin typing a file name to save a file, it interprets this as a desire to filter the contents of the file list.
The aforementioned lack of any path or way to type in the full path to a location.
There were more but thankfully I don't see it as often since I use KDE now.
This site compares the two directly: https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbna...
The rest of your complaints, which I share, remain unfixed.
Granted I've never used Windows 98 so I don't know what I'd compare it with but all those misfeatures sound annoying.
See the linked web page for a screenshot of the W98 picker for a visual aid.
What is it supposed to remember? Last path you opened? Seems to work fine for me in Firefox at least. First I tried uploading a image to imgur from my Downloads directory, then next time I wanted to select a picture it opened into the Downloads directory. Then I uploaded a image from my Pictures directory and next time it opened, it opened directly to the Pictures directory. Is this not what you mean?
> 2. it doesn't respect the paths (can't navigate)
Not sure what this means, if you type in /tmp and then Enter it'll navigate to /tmp just as you expect it to. If you're in /tmp/directory it shows "$DriveName / tmp / directory" and clicking on any of them navigates to the right place.
> 3. i don't want to play a keyboard shortcuts game
Why do you want to have a path bar that you type into then if you don't want to use the keyboard? Just manually double-click your way to success instead of using the keyboard, nothing is stopping you. Either use the keyboard, or don't. Both approaches work.