Folder Navigation in Vista - Happiness is a Hyperlinked Address Bar

I almost panicked when I couldn't find the "up" button in Vista. I was never a big fan of using the back button, because when you start following shortcuts, or entering UNC paths in the address bar, it can get a little confusing.

I was pretty disappointed until I realized that all of the items in the address bar can be clicked on. I think that this is a really nice feature, and I'll explain why.

In this picture of XP's Windows Explorer, If I wanted to get back to the root of C:, I could either press "up" 2 times, or I could click in there and delete the "windows\system32" and then press enter.

The picture below is Vista's Windows Explorer, you'll notice that "Local Disk (C:)" is highlighted, and if I click on it, Explorer will jump directly to the C: drive. It gets even better. The arrow to the right of C: is a dropdown menu.

As you can see from the picture below, you can now see all of the folders available to you on the C: drive, and clicking on any of them will jump directly to that folder.

Even better, the menu to the left of "Computer" is also a drop down list which can be used to get to some other frequently used items (see image below).

Even though it's going to take a little getting used to, I think this change will really save me some time.