Comment 59 for bug 386150

ShawnJGoff makes a good point that standard buttons are really not the appropriate widget for the breadcrumbs. Not only are they an illogical choice, they also look very unattractive. Instead, it would be preferable if the breadcrumbs were made up of clickable text elements in the following format: element > element > element. KDE's Dolphin implements breadcrumbs in exactly this way, as you can see in this screenshot of Dolphin with Ubuntu's GTK style: http://blog.rom1v.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/dolphin-gnome.png

Using this style of breadcrumbs would allow the vertical space required for the breadcrumbs to be reduced, and probably the horizontal space as well. The breadcrumbs could even be moved out of the toolbar and into a thin strip at the top of the content area, as in the dolphin screenshot, freeing up space in the toolbar, and allowing it to be reduced to one row. This would allow the places sidebar to extend further vertically upward.

Additionally, I agree the combining the stop and reload buttons into one would be a step in the right direction. This way, the stop button would only appear when it has a purpose (during long loads of network resources), and it would be substantially less confusing to users.

Customizable toolbars of the sort that Firefox and Safari have (drag and drop) would also be a nice feature.

The main characteristic that has traditionally distinguished Gnome is a commitment to usability. This commitment has served Gnome well over the years, contributing to its current popularity among Linux/Unix environments. It is important that we not stop innovating for the sake of usability, and that we not become bound by tradition, and simply allow Gnome to stagnate. There are certainly many things that can be improved about the current Nautilus, and indeed the rest of Gnome, and these changes should not be dismissed out of hand just because they involve breaking with convention.