I have already altered the code to make sure when the Navigator option is off the menu is never loaded at all.  This is currently in Vault only.  As for the space, that is a big issue because the structure of the forums itself.  I don't plan on changing this until we figure out what direction we are going to take the UI in.

I put this here for a reason.  This represents the table rendering in the forums pages. The white bg cells are caps, those are what give the forums an edge.  In this current theme, it is actually an image in each one, different image though.  The black areas represent various columns among the views.  The red area represents what i call the icon area.  This is the column which the folder status icons display.  This is also the column where the solpart menu displays.  The black areas are what the breadcrumbs take up in that row though. 

I have tried to do as suggested before but it always looked horrible.  Something was always not lining up proper.  As a matter of fact, if you check out post view when Solpart is enabled for this mod, you will see that I still let the change remain there and the menu actually bumps a row up, or something ;)