I like to view folders before my files with Files/Nautilus, and here is how to enable it :

In dconf-editor navigate to: org.gnome.nautilus.preferences key and set sort-directories-first to true.

Recursive search is the default in nautilus (search in subfolders), but I prefer type ahead search(only search in current folder).

This is easy to change, but not very obvious. In dconf-editor navigate to org > gnome > nautilus > preferences and set the enable-interactive-search value to what you’d like to use.

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/01/nautilus-type-ahead-find-feature.html