A breadcrumb trail tracks and displays each page viewed by a visitor of a website, either in the order the pages were viewed, or in other definitions, displaying a hierarchy of the current page in relation to the website's structure. Breadcrumbs are typically placed in horizontal form under the masthead or navigation of a website.
Websites
Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a Web page, often below title bars or headers. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page or—in hierarchical site structures—the parent pages of the current one. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point. A greater-than sign often serves as hierarchy separator, although designers may use other glyphs, as well as various graphical icons. A breadcrumb trail or path based on viewing history is typically rendered as follows : Page viewed > Page viewed > Page viewed > Page viewed > Page currently being viewed For instance, in this scenario, a website visitor views seven pages : Home page > Services > About Us > Home page > Latest Newsletter > Home page > Page currently being viewed Typical breadcrumbs following a hierarchical structure are shown as follows: Home page > Section page > Subsection page
Location: location breadcrumbs are static and show where the page is located in the website hierarchy.
Attribute: attribute breadcrumbs give information that categorizes the current page.
Path: path breadcrumbs show users the steps they took to end up on current page.
Usability
Location breadcrumbs are not necessarily appropriate for sites whose content is so rich that single categories do not fully describe a particular piece of content. For this reason, a tag may be more appropriate, though breadcrumbs can still be used to allow the user to retrace their steps and see how they arrived at the current page.
Other names
Some commentators and programmers alternatively use the term "cookie crumb" as a synonym to describe the navigation design. This should not be confused with the term cookie, which refers to HTTP cookies. Michigan Community College's Virtual Learning Collaborative uses the term "Navigation Path", as do some Drupal users. French and Spanish speakers sometimes use instead the term Ariadne's thread in relation to the thread left by Ariadne to Theseus so he can find the exit of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur, on a LIFO instead of FIFO way.
