The following two features have been raised again and again from user around our university who use our Elgg site, these would be so nice if they were someway included in the 1.8

Login

There does not seem to be an obvious way to login from anywhere but the main page.  If you were to follow a link from an email to someone's content.  Typically I am not logged in at this point.  If I want to reply or comment on the content I have to manually go back to the main page, log in, and then manually go back and find the content I want to comment on, this confuses many of our users.

Most sites simply have a link that is visible from any page alerting the user that they arent currently logged in, it would be great if the site would allow them to login and then get automatically re-directed back to the page they were on.

Breadcrumbs

Also Bread crumbs are badly needed, this would would help majorly with navigation.  Often I find myself in a sub-page of a particular area and wanting to just go back one or two levels.  The back button works sometimes (depending on how you got there).  But in many cases you find yourself having to go back to main area through the top bar (i.e, groups) and then working your way down through the levels to where you want to be, this confuses users into not wanting to use the system.

*Note, the above text was posted by danielwells, I found these just before I was about to type the same out again, so I used his words, so I didnt have to.. Thanks Daniel, your having the same issues that my user are.