No More Breadcrumbs and Other Vista Add-ons

I was reading the latest edition of Vista News when this caught my eye:

Is there a way to fix Vista Explorer’s address box?
QUESTION:
Okay, I know it’s a “feature” but I hate it - the new format for the path/address in Vista Explorer. I want my old familiar format (c:\Data\Publications\New) instead of the new one with the little arrows. Yes, I know you can click anywhere in the path and go there, but I just want it back the way it used to be. Is there any way? Thanks! - Don L.

This ‘breadcrumb’ ‘feature’ is Number One on my list of most unusable/annoying things about Windows Vista. I was happy to see that they found a third party application created by Andreas Verhoeven, AveNoBreadCrumb.exe [mirror], that will eliminate it. Screenshots of it in action are here. They also have instructions on how to get it to run at startup so that breadcrumbs are disabled whenever you’re using your computer - but I’m not sure that they are completely accurate (I’m unable to test as I don’t have any Vista computers yet). Here’s how I’d do it:

Unzip AveNoBreadcrumb.zip.

Put the two executable files (AveNoBreadcrumb.exe and breadcrumbhook.dll) into a suitable folder and location (I suggest C:\Program Files\AveNoBreadcrumb).

Open an explorer window and type in shell:Startup into the address bar to get to your startup folder.

Create a shortcut to AveNoBreadcrumb.exe (Right click in an empty area in the folder, click New > Shortcut. The location is C:\Program Files\AveNoBreadcrumb\AveNoBreadcrumb.exe and I’d name it AveNoBreadcrumb.)

Reboot.

TAA DAAH! No more breadcrumbs!

Mr. Verhoeven has some other interesting add-ons for Vista. Shown are Glass Toasts (gives the balloon notifications the Aero Glass look), 3D User Picture (creates a 3D animated user pictur in the Start menu), Thumbnail Sizer (allows you to change the size of the thumbnails that show when you hover over the taskbar button for the window), AveDesktopSites (a limited replacement for the no longer existing Active Desktop), Desktop Effects, (adds special effects to your desktop), Extra Desktops (adds extra desktops), Vista Folder Background (makes custom folder backgrounds possible), HTML Explorer Thumbnails (allows thumbnails of HTML files), and AveExplorerButtons (changes two little used Explorer buttons to two more used buttons). AveNoBreadcrumb isn’t shown here yet - it’ll probably be here soon.