How to get Vista breadcrumbs navigation on Windows XP

Posted on March 12, 2008 at 6:10 am

Other than the usual bugs found in Microsoft Vista, there are a few things that I like about it: one being the Aero “glass” interface and other visual effects. I personally am waiting till Service Pack 1 comes out before installing it on my main laptop as I’ve heard too many “I hate Vista” stories already!

Another nice-looking feature of Windows Vista is the breadcrumb style that you see in Windows Explorer as your browse through folders.

If you want to get this breadcrumb look in Windows XP, you now can using a nifty little application called QTAddressBar. Once you’ve downloaded it, unzip the files and run the exe file to install.

Once you have installed the program, you’ll need to log off the computer before it actually works. Once you have restarted or logged back in, you have to enable the program in Explorer by opening My Computer and then right-clicking on the toolbar area.

You’ll notice that Address Bar is checked and QT Breadcrumbs Address Bar is not checked. You need to first uncheck Address Bar and then right-click again and check QT Breadcrumbs so that it takes over the address bar.

And that’s it! You should now have gotten rid of your older Windows XP style address bar

for the fancy looking Vista breadcrumb style address bar like shown below:

Moving your mouse over any of the directories in the hiearchy colors it with a shiny Vista blue! The cool thing is that you can click on any of the directories and jump to a directory within any of them as shown below:

It basically converts your Explorer from analog to digital mode if you know what I mean! The problem with analog tapes, etc is that you have to browse through them linearly and can’t skip. Digital tapes, cds, etc have the advantage of being started up from any location instantly. In the same way, you can be ten folders deep and at any time go to another folder in a directory that’s five folders up in the hierarchy. Sweet!

The software is tiny and doesn’t slow down Windows Explorer at all. Definitely a useful add-on for practical purposes (ability to skip around the folder structure) and for looks also! Enjoy! Source: HowToGeek

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3 Responses to “How to get Vista breadcrumbs navigation on Windows XP”

Sjuzn said on : November 25th, 2008 at 6:46 am

a cool tool…

QT Breadcrumbs Address Bar: Windows XP中模拟Vista的地址栏功能 | Geedr.com Says:

[...] From HowToGeek via Online Tech Tips [...]
March 12th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Enhance Windows Explorer navigation using Direct Folders Says:

[...] your productivity. I wrote earlier about a program called QTAddressBar, which allows you to get the Vista breadcrumbs feature in XP! and Q-Dir, an alternative to Windows Explorer with four panes instead of [...]
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:43 am