Does anyone know if it’s possible to make the List View default in the File Manager? Obviously it’s been discussed before that for non-image files, the Grid View isn’t very helpful (file names are truncated).
Another problem I see is that selecting list view or even navigating to a folder aren't persistent. In other words, why doesn’t it “remember” the last view you were on when you opened the file browser? This is pretty standard behavior for most apps, and pretty annoying when you are using MIGx, for example, and have a ton of files to attach.
Yes - there's a system setting under core > back end manager called modx_browser_default_viewmode. Change this from 'grid' to 'list' and you'll have your list.
With regard to folder persistence - yeah - that's just still a pain. You could look into the TinyMCE Wrapper suite. It has several file managers as options which may have persistence as part of the deal.