Anyone remember the good ole way of navigating from the current open window with the arrow keys? If not, don't worry I will explain. If you do remember, OS X allows the same navigation, no need to read on.. just happy arrowing.
[Editor's note - read the rest of the article for one take on browsing the new finder using arrow keys and modifiers to great effect; there's some stuff in here that I'd never even thought to try before!]
Here goes! Navigating the Finder in the new OS X interface can get a little messy, especially now with the everything opens in one consistent window and you have a back button, much like an internet browser. This is cool, don't get me wrong, but I have still found the fastest and easiest way, for me, is still using the arrow keys.
This is also especially good if you open a folder in your dock and you want to go UP one folder... and the only thing you can think to do is go back from the root folder and dig from there. Simply all you need to know is command-up and command-down. With the arrow keys you can jump through the files in the finder window... once you have the one you want to open, be it a folder or document, just hit command-down and it will open it. If you are in a folder that you want to go UP one folder from, press command-up and there you go into the folder that contains the folder where you just were.
If you want to get REALLY fancy... you can add option in there. So now if you press command-option-up it would close the current window, and open the folder that contained the folder where you were.
Another useful thing to do is if you have multiple drives, or a zip disk and a CD-ROM mounted... you can use command-right and command-left to jump to them, much like the command-up and command-down, although I have only ever used the command-left & right in the save/open dialogs.
That is all I can teach you for navigation using the arrows. Hope you are now even more efficient from this.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010510111342529