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RE: crumb trails

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Aug 12, 2005 11:02AM

> Hi All, I have had a question from one of our developers.
>
> Say a user is on a page deep in a website, e.g.
>
> Home > page 1 > next_level_page > parent_page > actual_page
>
> Is an acceptable crumbtrail ...
>
> Home > parent_page > actual_page

First of all, and this is just my personal pet peeve, I don't like the
term 'breadcrumb trail' as it's a bit misleading. A true crumbtrail will
show you the path you've taken through the site. A breadcrumb trail is
designed to show you where you are in the site hierarchy, regardless of
the actual path you took.

The typical use of a 'topic path' menu (my preferred term ;o) is to
allow people to jump back up the chain quickly, as well as providing a
'you are here' type of wayfinding marker for those that dove into the
site from somewhere else.

As such, I'd lean towards showing the full structure.

> I am not sure about this because it doesn't represent the
> navigational structure.

I'd agree.

> Home > ....> parent_page > actual_page
>
> or
>
> .....> parent_page > actual_page

Again, going with the idea of showing the full path, I think I'd go with
including the HOME link.

Of course, that's just MHO.

-Darrel