My bad, I should have been more specific.
It's not the web script that will be preforming the actions on the directory. It will basically be a script that python is going to call that will do a change uid to that user and then do things with the directory. (More actually, zip certain files and send a copy of that zip file to the server). I know my audiece and they are (or at least will be) aware that the web page is going to zip up some files from their directory.
As for having the user type in the directory....that goes back to knowing the audience. For the people who live in the linux world..they don't even need the browser...the can just run the script via command line from local/bin. However...I'm making this for the windows people that need a gui...and thus I don't think they'd like needed to "type in" a directory...although mabye if I find a way to do tab completion.
Anyhow...there dosen't seem to be any easy way to get the user to just browse and select a directory....this is going to be a problem. >.<