Re: Breadcrumbs

Hoare, Tim wrote:

> Just looking at how best to present "breadcrumbs" to users in the most 
> accessible format. 

[a little snip]

> My big question is whether we should be explicitly presenting the 
> relationship between a Parent and Child (Option A - using ul, li), or 
> rather implying a relationship (Option B - straight text with some 
> separator).  Either way the breadcrumbs will be presented as:
> 
> Parent > Child
> 
> Option A:
> <code>
>     <span id="bread">
>         <ul>
>             <li><a href="#" title="Parent">Parent</a>
>                 <ul>
>                            <li>&gt; <a href="#" 
> title="Child">Child</a></li>
>                   </ul>
>             </li>
>         </ul>
>     </span>
> </code>
> 
> 
> Option B:
> <code>
>     <span id="bread"><a href="#" title="Parent">Parent</a> &gt; <a 
> href="#" title="Child">Child</a>
> </code>


I remember an alistapart article about lists that treated a 
breadcrumb trail like your first example. I find that a bit 
clumsy structurally, and only really makes sense if there are 
more than one option per level.

Visually the structure resembles the directory structure as seen 
in Windows Exploring.

I prefer the following structure:
<ul class="breadcrumb">
  <li><a href="...">Parent</a> &gt;</li>
  <li><a href="...">Child</a> &gt;</li>
  <li><a href="...">Child of child</a> &gt; </li>
  <li>Article page</li>
</ul>

This follows the visual of a dos-prompt, or shell (well the 
output of pwd) - "/Parent/Child/Child Of Child/Article page" - a 
list of "directions" to the current location, rather than a 
representation of where the current page is in the hierachy.

Its also an aversion to having one item lists.


Mike.

Received on Friday, 30 July 2004 08:31:28 UTC