Oct
8
Written by:
Project Complete
10/8/2009 6:55 PM
Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? To refresh your memory, they are the children of a poor woodcutter in the Grimm's fairy tale by the same name. The woodcutter's wife (probably an evil stepmother) fears starvation, can't feed the kids anymore, and convinces the dunderhead of a husband to lead the children into the forest and abandon them so there's more food for the woodcutter and his wife. We're not told where Hansel and Gretel get their smarts from, but they leave a trail of pebbles from their house in order to find their way home. (They must have suspected their parents' intentions.) Since they find their way back home with the pebbles leading their way, they are led into the forest farther this time, but are only able to leave breadcrumbs from lunch to find their way back. The story progresses from there, the birds eat the breadcrumbs, they get lost, an evil witch (we presume even more evil, and more hungry than the wicked stepmother and dunderhead father) lures them to her candy house so she can eat them, etc. (And these are the stories we tell our children?!) But I digress... I always think of this story when I hear the word "breadcrumbs," and it helps me understand their function when it comes to websites.
You will usually find breadcrumbs at the top of a web page, appearing horizontally, typically below the title bars or headers. Like the fairy tale counterparts, they lead a user back to each previous page they've been on, providing a trail for them to follow back to the starting point. Usually, if it's a very big forest, uh, website, it becomes more necessary to have breadcrumbs, where a smaller one is not as critical since it's harder to get lost on a less complicated website. A greater than symbol (>) serves as a separator to indicate each page.
Breadcrumbs may look like this:
Title page > Section page > Subsection page
Some people refer to these as cookie crumbs, but don't be mislead by that term, because it can easily be confused with the cookie file that stores information in an HTTP file. We can discuss this term in a later blog, but for now, just remember that when you want to find your way around the forest of a website, be sure to follow your breadcrumbs.