RE: Breadcrumbs

Perhaps a definition of "breadcrumb" may help.  On the one hand a breadcrumb could represent X levels of the navigation path on a site the user took to arrive at a page.  There may be no hierarchical relationship between the breadcrumb links, just the path a user took on that site.  I see this as a series of links, not a list.  And if a user, via some external link, finds themselves deep into a site upon arrival, should there be a breadcrumb relative to that site?  Properly constructed global navigation should provide all this user needs to work across or up and down the sites layers of content.  

On the other hand, and seemingly how most responses here interpret "breadcrumb", it could simply represent some path through layers of pages to the current page, regardless of how the user arrived.  But sometimes there is more than one path to get to a page, which path should the breadcrumb contain?  In this case the breadcrumb is employed to do the job a good global navigation design should already be providing on the page.  It is this definition that implies the possibility of some hierarchical relationship and the desire to treat it as a list.  

If list elements are used to code such a breadcrumb and style sheets are used to make it render on a horizontal line, what happens to the page when rendered without the style sheet could violate 6.1 "Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document."

Kurt Mattes
Application Development Analyst
Technical Lead - Web Accessibility
[302] 282-1414 * Kurt_Mattes@BankOne.com


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of david poehlman
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 6:59 AM
To: Dennison, Sharon; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Breadcrumbs



Oh, I am not saying that we don't want links on those pages, just that
instead of making it necessary to tell people where they are, just make sure
they can know where they are and go somewhere else if needed.  It seems to
me that an over abundance of potential redundancey and clutter arrises when
it is unnecessary provided the developpers plan well.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dennison, Sharon" <Sharon.Dennison@ato.gov.au>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 9:10 PM
Subject: RE: Breadcrumbs



DP >sheesh, Why not just show us only the content of the page we are on
and we wouldn't need to know where we've been or where we need to go
next.<

While this statement makes good sense when viewing content which you
have navigated to youself, breadcrumbs prove particularly useful when
users have been linked through to lower level pages of a site when
coming from another site or search engine page. For example, if a user
is linked into a 4th or 5th level page in a large site they can then use
the breadcrumb links to move up a level to view 'like content', rather
than having to start from the beginning and find their way through the
standard navigation.  In this instance breadcrumbs also aid the user to
build a 'mental picture' of how the site is structured and where the
content is placed within this structure.

Having said this I can see how hearing "greater than" between links may
not be the best approach for someone using a screen-reader.

Regards
Sharon Dennison




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Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2004 08:18:12 UTC