[Sigia-l] Breadcrumbs - case study (maybe OT)

[John O'Donovan]

> As a metaphor - in your normal file navigation system (i.e. Windows
> Explorer), you open a directory and are presented with a listing of files
> and other directories *within* that directory. This gives you a linear,
> direct path from one point to another (thus the simple ability to provide
a
> full path to a file on your computer like
C:\files\directory\stuff\file.ext)
>

Unfortunately even with the file system analogy this is not quite true.
Links and shortcuts allow you to have files appear to be in more than one
directory - there may be a real file somewhere but ultimately you don't care
if you can see the link. And you may want that link in more than one place.

Windows XP as an example also now has both back and up buttons for
directories as well as shortcuts, so what is the path to the file as the
user sees it? The control panel is also a "virtual directory" - it looks
like a directory but is actually links to applications.

People are used to finding things in more than one place. For example they
are used to finding books by title or author - and they expect to find it
either way. From a categorisation and other viewpoints I think they are used
to dealing with this issue in interactions.

Cheers,

jod