Breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation is a graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces. It allows users to keep track of their locations within programs, documents, or websites. The term comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairy tale.

Breadcrumb navigation is displayed to the user, so they can easily see where the current page is in the hierarchy of the website. It typically appears horizontally near the top of a web page, often below the navigation bar or header. The term "breadcrumbs" comes from the breadcrumbs in the Hansel and Gretel story that were used to trace a path back to the starting point.

Types of Breadcrumb Navigation

There are three main types of breadcrumb navigation:

1. Location-based breadcrumbs: These show the user the path to their current location within the website's hierarchy. They are useful for websites that have multiple levels of content organization, such as e-commerce sites.

2. Path-based breadcrumbs: These display the pages the user has visited to arrive at the current page. This type is less common and can be confusing if the user visits the same page through different paths.

3. Attribute-based breadcrumbs: These are used on websites that categorize information in a non-hierarchical manner, such as e-commerce sites that allow filtering by attributes like brand, size, or color.

Advantages of Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation offers several advantages:

- Enhanced usability: Breadcrumbs provide a secondary navigation scheme that does not clutter the page, allowing users to navigate the website more easily. - Improved understanding of website structure: They help users understand the layout of a website. - SEO benefits: Breadcrumbs can contribute to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by providing another layer of internal links that search engines can crawl.

Implementation

In web design, breadcrumb navigation is typically implemented using HTML and CSS. JavaScript may be used for more dynamic breadcrumb trails. The breadcrumbs are usually marked up using ordered or unordered lists, and modern web development practices recommend using structured data (such as Schema.org's BreadcrumbList) to help search engines understand the breadcrumbs' structure.

Examples

A typical breadcrumb trail might look like this:

Home > Category > Subcategory > Page

Each segment of the breadcrumb is usually hyperlinked except for the last page, which is the current page.

Considerations

While breadcrumb navigation is useful, it should not replace primary navigation methods. It is a supplementary navigation aid that can enhance user experience but is not suitable as the sole navigation method.