One thing that I liked while playing around with mac os was the Finder (mac's file manager) column view. For those that haven't seen it, it looks like this:
I’m also fan of Miller Columns since NeXT Step, Rhapsody then MacOS-ten.
To wait an hypothetical add-in caja, you can install pantheon-file FM to bring this browsing ability to Ubuntu Mate.
You can find the procedure do it properly at noobslab
Here is not a perfect solution, but that limit errors, all actions to open folders and files are dbl-click.
On OSX it is more logic with single click to browse and dbl-click to open. I will perhaps open a demand to pantheon team.
gsettings set org.pantheon.files.preferences single-click false