Clicking a file during "save as" changes name to that filename

Question

This is an old peeve about OS X.
Do a save as... on this page. In the save dialog box, make sure you're in a subfolder (navigate into one if necessary). Also make sure you're in icon view or list view. Now assume you don't want to save the page into this folder, but in its parent. So you navigate up a level using command-up arrow or by clicking in the drop-down menu at the top of the dialog box.
Now you are up a level but the selection is the subfolder you were in a moment ago.
If you click "save" you'll be back in the subfolder, which you don't want.
If you click on a different folder, you still can't click "save", or you'll be in that folder.
If you try to "click off" by clicking on a filename, the name of the file you're saving will be replaced by the name of that file.
If you have enough screen space, you can expand the dialog box until there's empty space in the file list, then click there. But this isn't always an option.
You may be able to go up another level, and then down again into the folder you want, which will eliminate the selection, but this is crazy.
What I'd really like to know is, does anyone find the italicized behavior above to be functional? If not, why does Mac OS still do this? (Note, it didn't do this prior to Mac OS X.) And is there a better approach than the ones I've given, to move up a level in the folder hierarchy when doing a save?

Answer 1

Kurt, Steve, thanks for your answers. I think I see the reason for the discrepancy. The behavior doesn't happen when you use the popup menu. It does happen if you use command-up arrow to navigate to the parent folder.
Again, if there aren't too many files in the parent folder, one workaround is to expand the save dialog box...but that requires you to take your hands off the keyboard. A lot of the time, I'm using command-s and would rather not pick up the mouse. And it may not even be an option, if the are a lot of files/folders in the parent folder.
The "foolproof" approach, which can be done entirely at the keyboard, is to do command-up arrow twice, then navigate back down. But this is pretty clumsy and unintuitive.
What bugs me about this isn't the danger of overwriting a file (somehow I've never fallen for that pitfall) but the annoyance of not being able save the file under the name provided, e.g. when saving a web page (or a PDF displayed in Safari) or doing right-click > save as (again, typically on a link to a PDF).
I've never had a need to pick up a name from the Save (As) dialog box. So for me this feature is completely anti-functional, and I really wish there was an option or hack to disable it and let "click off" just remove the folder selection. Even better, if I could remove the folder selection using a (non-kludgy) keyboard approach.