[Usability] New Pathbar

[David Christian Berg <david sipsolutions net>]

Hey guys,

I've never gotten to warm with the new pathbar, because it doesn't allow
you to easily go to hidden directories or use tab completion to go to a
location. Ctrl+L ist just a work around in my opinion.
Still what I do very much like about the new pathbar is the fact that it
enables you to get rid of the reload and the up button in nautilus if it
were used there.
However, I've created a mockup of what I think might be a solution to
combine the two features.
I admit that this came to my mind looking at a screenshot of windows
vista, but I was told it actually doesn't work that way in vista.

So here's the suggestion:
You have a entry box, where you can just type in what ever you like --
this entry has tab completion. The slash will be replaced by a nice
arrow, which is just for the looks, because people said within the
discussion about the button pathbar, that the slashes were too geeky for
the average user.
Now anyways: The different directories you are in, which can be seen in
the pathbar entry, act just like links in html... on hover they are
prelighted and on click you go to that location. This allows to get rid
of the up button and the reload button in nautilus (when you click on
the folder you're in it's reloaded).
If the path displayed is to long, you can scroll the contents of the
entry widget by using the arrow buttons on either side of the entry.
Anyways: There's a mockup of what this looks like which can be found at:

http://home.tu-clausthal.de/~dcb/linux/newpathbar.png

So what do you guys think of this approach?

Hope to hear from you!

David


PS: Please don't bash it too much, just because I got the idea looking
at a Vista screenshot ;)