Make the pathbar editable. This can be achieved by adding an "edit" button, and when it's clicked turning the pathbar into a text box. Optionally the behavior of Ctrl-L can be altered to do the same thing, and if so the "Open Location" dialog can be removed. This approach combines the advantages of "pathbar style" and "toolbar style", and is already present in nautilus, dolphin and Windows(TM) 7's explorer. The exact implementations vary, win7's being the most fancy, nautilus's (like the rest of GNOME) a little buggy, but the idea is roughly the same.
This seems to be fixed in Thunar 1.6.3.
Did not see a fix in 1.6.11 ( So I doubt that it is fixed in 1.6.3) , however definitely will be fixed for 1.7.0. ( See details here: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12578 ) This bug should be closed as duplicate of bug 12578
Not exactly a dup of 12578, it's the opposite, but now 12578 is already closed.