[Sigia-l] Breadcrumbs

[d.brodale]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Livia Labate wrote:

> I feel the term breadcrumbs is a very good metaphor & title, because it
> instantly tells us what it is. Everyone has been introduced to Hansel &
> Gretel at some point in their life [...]

I believe the underlying point was that the trail of breadcrumbs
nearly always leads along only one path (straight up a heirarchy)
in practice and not along that which a user has traveled. It
is this observation that weakens or breaks the metaphor evoked
by the term. What the trail of links exposes is not the particular
path taken (in a Grimmian fashion) but rather a path leading from
a given page to some common anchor point (usually the master or
local 'home' page).

In this way, 'breadcrumbs' serve to orient users to their present
location within a site relative to a fixed point from which
(presumably) all possible paths radiate. I believe that, more
often than not, what is communicated is along the lines of
"This Way Out" and "You Are Here" moreso than "This Is Where
You Have Been."


> [T]he people who use the term are IAs and Web developers - where jargon
> is necessary [...] I think it is a really good and versatile term for
> us, while completely irrelevant to the end user to whom the jargon is
> unimportant.

Although I would agree that compact terminology leads to
efficient communication of needs, the words used are not
completely irrelevant to those outside the technical fold
(e.g. clients) when the mechanism of 'breadcrumbs' becomes
a topic of conversation.

-don