In Nautilus (3.2.1), the "back" and "forward" buttons are located on the right side of the location bar, just left to the "search" button. This puts them to the far right side of the window.

This is non-optimal; all other often clicked items are on the left and middle part of the window (the sidebar, the folder entries, and the menu bar). Because of this, clicking "back" of "forward" almost always requires moving the mouse a long way.

Therefore, the two buttons should be moved back to the left side of the location bar, or at least a config option added for doing this. However, I really don't see why anyone would want the buttons on the right. Maybe because if they were on the left, they would move the location bar to the right and make is less accessible? The buttons take almost no space, and that's nothing compared to the extra effort needed to click back/forward.