No subject

artificially overlaid structure where all files are links and the actual
file and / or data is in a database - there can even be distinct advantages
to this approach.

With breadcrumbs I would start by asking:

- Why do you want them to be there as designer?
What other content is linked to this content heirachically or otherwise that
a breadcrumb could be used for linking to? What do you want to lead users
into...? For me, Amazon does this better with it's book suggestions than
breadcrumbs as these are far more focussed.

- What does your user want to get out of them?
Do they want to see where they are? Look at related topics?

- Why might they need to be there?
Is there a definite cross referencing or other advantage to having them - or
is your core navigation so rubbish no-one will have a clue what is going on
without them.

- Can you make the approach consistent?
Across the whole site, we can't...:) http://www.bbc.co.uk too impractical,
too irrelevant, too unnecessary. If it's not consistent then where and how
can it be useful, and is it too confusing if it is not consistent?

As for terminology - my mum still thinks breadcrumbs are in the breadbin and
when she finds them she throws them in the real bin. So do all her friends.
As long as we understand them as the same thing it doesn't matter.

The more interesting part of the discussion has been around how, when and
where to use them and what types of breadcrumbs might be considered.

Cheers,

jod


----- Original Message -----
From: "Beau Lebens" <beau at dentedreality.com.au>
To: "John O'Donovan" <jod at adito.net>; "John O'Donovan" <jod at badhangover.net>
Cc: <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 3:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Breadcrumbs - case study (maybe OT)


I would say that this (and Ziya's response) actually confirm my analogy -
since


when dealing with directories for example, if you change into a
'sym-directory'
on a *nix box, or follow a directory shortcut on a win32 box (don't know
about
macs here...) then you end up in the same directory, and if you display the
full path to your current location (what a lot of people are doing
with 'breadcrumbs') then you will not see the same as if you had navigated
directly to the true location.

windows 2000 actually added the back/up options to navigating the
filesystem,
and i would say that the standard on the web currently is that the back
option
is provided by the browser (whether it is as good as it could be or not is
another argument entirely), but on the actual site, you are in a position to
offer the 'up' option, creating structure within a space which otherwise
does
not necessarily have it (due to hyperlinks subverting hierarchy - cluetrain
manifesto #7 :)

breadcrumbs may not be an *accurate* term for what we are discussing - but
everyone knows what it is don't they? you don't have to tell your users they
are called breadcrumbs - it's just a term used in the profession to refer to
the list of hierarchically-based links indicating the current page's
location
in the site structure.

trying to offer a listing of every possible path that a user may or may not
have followed to a particular page is a pointless exercise as they could
obviously have come from a *lot* of different places. Unless you are going
to
try to replicate the browser's back button functionality and track users
within
your site, then output a list of links indicating where they *did* actually
come from, i would suggest that we are going to have to settle for a
hierarchical-style of breadcrumbs, which at least gives *some* context, even
if
it's not necessarily *the* context (based on the user's own path).

beau

Quoting John O'Donovan <jod at badhangover.net>:

> > 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
>
>
>
>