Folder Cruising in Adobe Bridge

Posted on 06/12/2011 by Michael Hoffman

Back in Bridge CS4, Adobe introduced a cool navigation feature in Bridge called “Folder Cruising.” It’s very simple, but really effective, and in Bridge CS5 it received some slight tweaks that make it even easier to use. Here’s how it works.

For this particular technique, you need to be able to see the Enhanced Path Bar in Bridge:

If you don’t see the Path Bar, choose Window > Path Bar:

Now, as with Eplorer in Windows 7, and Finder on a Mac, you can click the folder names in the Path Bar to navigate immediately to the selected folder. And, when you double click a folder in the content panel or the folders panel to navigate into that folder, the Path Bar expands to include the current folder.

However, try this: Click the > symbol that separates the folders in the Path Bar. A menu pops up showing all folders at that level (Hint: you can also right-click in Windows or Control-click on a Mac to activate this menu):

Now, choose a folder from the popup menu. You’re in Folder Cruising mode. Clicking a folder expands the Path Bar to that folder, and displays all the sub-folders at the new level:

Once you’ve reached your destination, you can stop folder cruising by choosing that from the menu, by clicking directly on a folder in the Path Bar, or by clicking elsewhere in the interface:

What a great feature!

But, the Path Bar does even more. In Bridge CS5, you can drag a folder to the Path Bar to open it (although I’m not sure how this is better than double clicking). A blue rectangle appears when the folder is dragged onto the Path Bar, and dropping the folder opens it immediately:

And, if drag and drop or clicking are too simple, you can also edit the path manually by typing it in. Clicking once on the last item in the Path Bar changes the bar into a text field where you can manually type in the path (might be useful for changing to a different drive altogether):

Finally, don’t forget that Bridge includes Navigation Buttons, which provide “Forward/Backward” navigation capability, just like in your browser. And, the little downward triangle next to the Navigation arrows gives a history list of recent folders: