Posted by JDS on 11/07/20 11:53

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 09:57:33 -0700, Colin wrote:

> What you are talking about I would call a directory or page heirarchy.

See, now, I've always interpreted breadcrumbs to be a fixed directory
hiearchy, and have nothing to do with the user's current browsing session.

Home > Products > Gizmos > Rotating Sprockets

Makes sense to me that that thing there is a representation of the
website's hiearchy.


Although I can understand the "user's current browsing session" type of
breadcrumb implementation.

Of course, the two styles of breadcrumb require quite different
implementations.

Also, one of the things I don't like about the "current session" style of
breadcrumb is the logic problems: what happens when I browse from "Home"
to "Gizmos" to "Right Handed Doohickeys" and then back to "Gizmos"? But
just clicking on links, not using the breadcrumb itself. Does the
breadcrumb look like this?:

Home > Gizmos > Right Handed Doohickeys > Gizmos

Huh? What then? Also, what if the person comes in directly to the Right
Handed Doohickeys page from an outside page, say, a search? Does "RHD's"
get the top billing in the breadcrumb?

(Breadcrumb):

Right Handed Doohickeys

For me, those sorts of issues make it most sensible to stick with the
"breadcrumb as website hiearchy" model.

Also, on that note, the "breadcrumb" need not necessarily have anything to
do with the "URL". When I have implemented breadcrumbs, it has always
been with the use of a data flag -- in a database or in the page code --
that indicates, "This page's parent page is XXXX". In the case of
"Rotating Sprockets" or "Right Handed Doohickeys", the flag would be equal
to "Gizmos" (or, rather, the unique identifier for the page "Gizmos").

Using "parent page" identifiers, one can build the breadcrumb recursively
all the way back up to "Home".

later...

--
JDS

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