get Vista style breadcrumb nav in XP

I got a bit envious of the nice breadcrumb style location bar while messing with Snowbird recently. So, I went a-Googling.

With some light searching, I turned up two options: QT Address Bar and Minimalist Explorer Breadcrumbs. Both are shell extensions to Explorer, taking the form of toolbars.

I downloaded both, but have not installed QT Address Bar because of reported issues and the stellar performance of Minimalist. Also, QT looks like Vista, but Minimalist blends in nicely enough with your visual style.

Screenshots of Minimalist (traditional Address Bar disabled):

Note: StExBar (StEx in screencap) is a different shell extension I have; it's not related.

And, a nice feature, just like Vista, is that when you click on some empty space in the bar, it switches to an address bar and highlights the current path.

 

Having been shown by Elliot how the Vista breadcrumbs work, I think this shell extension has done a good job of bringing a (hopefully) helpful Vista feature to XP (and supposedly to 98/ME/2k/2003, too, though they haven't tested on those).

One last note: Explorer Breadcrumbs is completely free and functional, but they ask you to register it ($7.95) if you find it useful. Time will tell for me.