Why not just use fish://u...@host/path? I love fish:// I use it all the time with kate to edit scripts on remote machines. Pretty sure I can't get along with out it. I have debated Gnome for better behaving Evolution and a java app we use at work but I can't get past the ease of fish:// and smb:// for that matter.
The only bad thing is OO.org doesn't work over it - at least that I have found.