problem opening files from SMB share

["Wm. Josiah Erikson" <wjerikson hampshire edu>]

Hello all,
   I'm running Nautilus 2.8.2 on a debian sid box, and I figured out
eventually that rather than using "Connect to Server...", I still have
to type in smb:///user/:/password/@/servername/sharename/ /manually to
make it work properly (entering the username in the dialogue box of
"Connect To Server..." doesn't seem to work - any ideas why?).
   However, the problem I'm still having is that, I guess because it's
not actually mounted, OpenOffice and various other programs won't open
files directly from the share - they say it doesn't exist (for
instance:Could not open
'/home/josiah/jdmusic/smb://nsuser:nsuser carbon/NSPublic/wholerange.jpg'
for reading: No such file or directory). Certain GNOME apps seem to
understand fine - just dropping the beginning pathname of that, I guess
- I don't really know where Nautilus got that beginning pathname - it
exists, but I didn't run it from there. Is there any way around this? Do
you guys not answer questions like this on this list? Is there somewhere
else I should go?
   Thanks much,
   -Josiah