Windows Vista Features : Enhanced Address Bar

For the first time since Windows 95, the address bar gets a major overhaul in Windows Vista. Now, instead of the classic address bar view, the address bar is divided into dropdown menu nodes along the navigation path, making it easier than ever to move through the shell hierarchy. This is referred to as the breadcrumb bar.

To see how this works, open the Documents Explorer by clicking the Documents item in the Start Menu and observing the address bar. Each has a small arrow next to it, indicating that you can click there to trigger a drop-down menu. To navigate to a folder that is at the same level in the shell hierarchy as the Documents folder, click the small arrow to the right of your user name.

As you can see in image below a drop-down menu appears, showing you all the folders that are available inside of your user account folder. You can click any of these to navigate there immediately. Note that doing this in XP would require two steps. First, you’d have to click the Up toolbar button; then, you’d have to double-click the folder you wanted. To simply move back up a level, click the node that is to the left of the current location. In this example we would click the node that is denoted by your user name.

To see the classic address bar, simply click a blank area of the enhanced address bar.