I am not a Windows Vista user and definitely would not switch to it in near future unless I buy a new laptop. But few of the new features that Windows Vista has are really good and I would definitely like to have few of these in Windows XP.

I just took some time of my break as I could not resist talking about this nice little software that helps you get another feature from Vista into Windows XP.

Windows Vista has a cool little feature where it displays the navigation as a Breadcrumb just like a web site does. Clicking on any breadcrumb link in a website will take you to that folder thus making navigating a better experience.

How about getting the same feature for Windows XP? You don’t have to wait to long for it. The developer of QTTabbar ^[1] which is a tabbed windows explorer has now come up with another gem called QT Address Bar ^[2]. QT Address Bar is a toolbar that works like the Windows Vista address bar, allowing you to browse folders without having to load them in the explorer.

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After you have installed QT Address Bar, you will have right click in a empty space near the explorer address bar and activate the it. See screen shot below.

Once you have selected the option you will see the QT Address Bar next to the regular address bar.

You can completely disable the regular Address Bar by deselecting it. In the above screen shot as you can see that QT Address Bar adds a breadcrumb navigation which separates folders from each other. Clicking on the arrow key placed in front of the folder you will see a additional drop down that will list the sub-folder present in that folder.

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Using the drop down you can navigate to any of those folders or their sub folders too. Now this is a definite must have that I recommend.

Software Requirements

Windows XP
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

Download QT Address Bar ^[2]

If you want more than just that then read about the replacements for Windows Explorer ^[5].