Talk:Breadcrumb navigation

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Usability

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Usability, a group of editors promoting application of web and user-interface usability best practices in the presentation of Wikipedia content. For more information, such as what you can do to help, see the main project page.UsabilityWikipedia:WikiProject UsabilityTemplate:WikiProject UsabilityUsability articles

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Gube, Jacob (2009-03-17). "Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practice". Smashing Magazine. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
Thurow, Shari (2014-09-24). "Think Breadcrumb Links Aren't Good For User Experience? Yes, They Are!". Marketing Land.

Contains current page?

Does a breadcrumb typically contain the current page? Is there a convention? 74.121.2.213 05:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot

We need a SCREENSHOT For This.

I added a screenshot of Nautilus, using its (hated by some) implementation of this. Unfortunately, my screenshot application saves in jpg for some reason, so it's all artifact-y. Also, I had to make the thumbnail 300px wide, to make it legible. I hope that's not too big. Stale Fries ^{taste better} 22:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can we get a screenshot of Windows Vista's breadcrumb system in the explorer address bar?--121.223.243.95 (talk) 08:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think a "classic" TEXT breadcrumb (ala Yahoo!) would be a better example. There's only 2,454,343,453 websites that use them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cherylrenee (talk • contribs) 14:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The two screenshots are obscure examples that aren't easy to understand. How about using an example from a popular website. Like stated above, there are so many good examples, yet here we have two obscure examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.196.141.50 (talk) 22:43, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Poor name

"Breadcrumbs" is an unfortunate metaphor. Hansel and Gretel used stones in their earlier successful navigation; when later they were forced to use breadcrumbs, these were eaten by birds and they got lost. Who coined the term? Is it too late to change it to "pebbles"? jnestorius^(talk) 12:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The original usage was in Bernstein, Mark, and Linda Thorsen. Developing Dynamic Documents: Special Challenges for Techical Communicators 34th International Technical Communications Conference. Denver: 1987. Jakob Nielsen cites this in his review papers and in his Hypertext and Hypermedia. See also [http://www.ickn.org/elements/hyper/cyb32.htm], [1]. In fact, the original proposal embraced the idea that breadcrumbs should fade with time, just as "visited link colors" (another manifestation of breadcrumbs) return to normal link colors after a span of time has passed. Revisiting a page you have recently seen is semantically and experientially distinct from revisiting a page you saw months or years before. MarkBernstein 19:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate name suggestions.

Though none of these terms has (in my opinion) the same level of recognition, they might serve as better metaphors.

"Lilypads" - a reference to frogs leaping from lilypad to lilypad towards a destination. This could better convey the idea that points along a file path can branch in several directions, whereas a bread crumb trails generally seen as linear paths without any branches along the way.
"Way points" - similar to "lilypads" in terms of implications'
"Stepping Stones" - as mentioned in another post on the discussion page, Hanzel and Gretel only use crumbs because they run out of stones. Plus, the "stepping stones" cliche/idiom is arguably better known than the tale of Hanzel & Gretel. Further, this term might benefit & reinforce the existing metaphor of a file "path", as many walking paths in the physical world are still paved with stones.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by SaturatedPhat (talk • contribs) 08:39, 2 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

--SaturatedPhat 08:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC) -fixed typos[reply]

Although I agree that some of those make more sense, we can't really add them as they would be considered original research (I think that's the right link). Also, those ideas wouldn't really be useful as metaphors to allow the reader to understand the concept, as it's already a fairly simple idea, and it has a good explanation. If you can find sourced uses of these terms elsewhere, though, feel free to add them as alternative terms, and cite them. Stale Fries ^{taste better} 22:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Will Wikipedia ever have Breadcrumbs?

Ive seen these on one other Wiki. They would be a great idea for Wikipedia. Is it gonna happen? Or is there some technical restriction that prevents it from happening? Haplolology ^Talk/_{Contributions} 04:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vista

This page should mention that Vista uses a breadcrumb approach for Windows Explorer...as well as the seething hatred some computer users have for the damned useless things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.215.253 (talk) 02:55, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Categories or namespaces?

The usability section of the article says

Location breadcrumbs are not necessarily appropriate for sites whose content is so rich that single categories do not fully describe a particular piece of content. This is a common situation in sites employing a search-base navigation paradigm (for example, Amazon).

But as I understand it, and according to the usage on Mediawiki Help (I got to this article from the link on that page), location breadcrumbs* indicate location in namespace, not membership in categories. Namespaces are by definition hierarchical, so there's only one possible breadcrumb trail for any page. But categories are unstructured: a page can be included in any number of categories, and it's meaningless to talk of which category is the "parent" of which other category down to the page level. (Categories can be subcategorized, but that doesn't seem to be involved here.)

* That page just says "breadcrumbs. It's about namespaces, not browser paths with "forward" and "back".

-- Thnidu (talk) 18:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Name

Although Breadcrumb seem to become an acceptably name the technical name is "orientation Path". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.115.235.2 (talk) 08:01, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Confused?

The page seems a bit confused as it refers to Haensel & Gretel who obviously marked the way they were going (== the history of locations where they have been - their PATH), but only lists ATTRIBUTE and LOCATION breadcrumbs as types, but misses to give PATH as a type.

It even explains that LOCATION breadcrumbs mark the current location in the hierarchy of pages, which is obviously not necessarily the same as the PATH the user has taken to end up at the current location.

Citation from http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/52/breadcrumb.htm

"""There are three different types of breadcrumbs represented in websites – path, attribute, and location (Instone, 2003). Path breadcrumb trails are dynamic in that any given page will show a different breadcrumb trail based on how the user reached the page. Attribute breadcrumb trails display meta information showing many different trails representing several possible paths to reach the page. The location breadcrumb trail is a textual representation of a site’s structure, e.g. Home > Furniture > Chairs > Leather Chairs. This representation of information allows users to link to major categories of information along a continuum of sequential order. Regardless of how users arrive at Leather Chairs, the breadcrumb trail displayed is the same. This study investigated the use of “location” breadcrumbs.""" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.99.172.1 (talk) 15:40, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, a WP:BLAR took place from State bag

Yeah, it wasn't doing too well, not too many editors or viewers. Basically it said that a State bag "holds" breadcrumbs, but it didn't have any citations for that, otherwise would've merged. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 04:17, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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