Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail is a navigation aid used in user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

s. It allows users to keep track of their locations within programs or documents. The term comes from the trail of breadcrumb

Breadcrumb

Breadcrumbs or bread crumbs are small particles of dry bread, which are used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thickening stews, and adding inexpensive bulk to meatloaves and similar foods. They are documented in cookbooks as early as 1716...

s left by Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel

"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...

 in the popular fairytale.

Websites

Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a web page, usually below title bars or headers. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page or—in hierarchical site structures—the parent pages of the current one. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point. A greater-than sign (>) often serves as hierarchy separator, although designers may use other glyph

Glyph

A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....

s (such as » or ›), as well as various graphical treatments.

Typical breadcrumbs look like this:

Home page > Section page > Subsection page

or

Home page : Section page : Subsection page

Types of breadcrumbs

There are three types of web breadcrumbs:

• Path: path breadcrumbs are dynamic and show the path that the user has taken to arrive at a page.
• Location: location breadcrumbs are static and show where the page is located in the website hierarchy.
• Attribute: attribute breadcrumbs give information that categorizes the current page.

Usability

Some commentators criticize path-style breadcrumbs because they duplicate functionality that properly subsists in the browser; namely, the 'Back' button and browsing history. And unlike the 'Back' button, the breadcrumbs move around horizontally.

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. For this reason, a tag

Tag (metadata)

In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...

 may be more appropriate, though breadcrumbs can still be used to allow the user to retrace their steps and see how they arrived at the current page.

Cookie crumb

Some commentators and programmers alternatively use the term "cookie crumb" (or some variant) as a synonym to describe the previously mentioned navigation technique. Cookies are pieces of data stored in a web browser machine by the visiting websites in a HTTP cookie

HTTP cookie

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...

 file. However, cookie crumb is rarely or ever referred to as this token of data. This is another technology used on the web that is different from the navigational method.

Operating systems

Current file managers like Nautilus

Nautilus (file manager)

Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....

, Dolphin

Dolphin (software)

Dolphin is a free and open source software file manager for and part of the KDE Software Compilation. It is the default file manager in the current version, KDE Software Compilation 4, and can be optionally installed on K Desktop Environment 3...

, Thunar

Thunar

Thunar is a file manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems, written using the GTK+ 2 toolkit, and shipped with Xfce version 4.4 RC1 and later. Thunar is developed by Benedikt Meurer, and was originally intended to replace XFFM, Xfce's previous file manager...

, Finder, SnowBird and Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer

This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...

 (on Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

/7) allow breadcrumbs navigation, often replacing or extending an address bar.

External links

• Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage by Bonnie Lida Rogers and Barbara Chaparro, 2003
• Influence of Training and Exposure on the Usage of Breadcrumb Navigation by Spring S. Hull, 2004