Comment 42 for bug 386150

I definitely agree the current Nautilus view is far too complicated. It should be pared down, and should take up less screen real estate. There should be one menu bar and one tool bar, that is it. Another row of chrome is acceptable to show tabs. Anything above this is guaranteed to be too much.

I believe firmly that the nautilus file browser should appear quite similar to a web browser. I agree with Vadim above when he says that users have problems with Web Browsers too, but the reason for the similarity is not ease of use per se, it's consistency. Users who are somewhat familiar using a web browser should be able to operate the file browser in a similar fashion. To that end, I like the proposed mockups, they are a definite improvement.

The UP button should go, there is no reason for it to exist with the breadcrumbs there.

The zoom buttons should definitely move to the status bar if they are going to be present at all (I think this point is debatable).

One thing that has always bothered me about the Nautilus UI is that the breadcrumbs don't have enough visual cohesion. They feel like regular buttons strewn about; there's not much to convey that it's the folder hierarchy in breadcrumbs form. In my opinion, if the buttons were smaller and grouped inside something that looks like a browser location bar, usability would improve drastically as it'd be far more obvious what their use is.