Rather than a fixed 4-pane browser, a potential solution is to use something like the macOS finder's "Column" view, where each layer of the hierarchy produces a new pane, as many as you need to drill down to the particular thing you're looking for.
Rather than a fixed 4-pane browser, a potential solution is to use something like the macOS finder's "Column" view, where each layer of the hierarchy produces a new pane, as many as you need to drill down to the particular thing you're looking for.
In case you want to know more about them, they're called "Miller columns"