alternaut may not have considered the "in advance" part; I got different results when I toggled the functionality after the .dmgs were open.
Sorry, but I'm a few sizes too anal to mess that up.
When I'm fully awake, that is, and in this case I was. Really!
All view changes were set before opening the test images. Still there are some interesting differences:
1. 'My' Pashua (v0.9.4.7; 11/29/2011, 1.71 MB) window is much smaller than you describe, and doesn't show all files and folders at that size to begin with. Weird. But it still gets smaller when the Path Bar is toggled on (before mounting and opening the dmg) and the vertical scroll bar appears. That part at least is normal behavior.
2. Net Monitor's background .png (of the same net4.5.4.dmg; 11/29/2011, 1.1MB) is present where Hal says it should be, but it doesn't show in the opened Net Monitor dmg window. Hence any cutoffs due to Path Bar view changes remain invisible, as opposed to the Net Monitor Sidekick image window. Weird, but otherwise again normal view behavior.
Repeated downloads of the affected files produce the same results. Therefore, these two differences must be due to my Mac, Leopard, or the (currently florfed?) combination thereof.
Apart from that, it appears that the original premise about the effect of the Path Bar view on the appearance of Finder windows still stands.
PS, your iFileX pre- and post images differ from the 3 others (note how the Path Bar here doesn't encroach upon the window contents area, but gets added below); this is likely due to the fact that this particular pair really shows the difference between Show- and Hide Path Bar, rather than a difference in toggle setting before
you opened this dmg.
