All You Need to Know About Breadcrumb Navigation

In the ancient fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, the titular characters decided to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind them so they could find their way back home. While this strategy didn’t work out as planned for the siblings, the same concept is utilized in computing today. We even refer to it as breadcrumb navigation in honor of the German fairy tale.

Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is basically what the fairy tale would suggest it is: a path that leads back home (or in this case, the homepage). It is effectively an easier way to keep track of the path to and from a certain page and is usually displayed at the top of the viewed page. Each step provides a link that navigates back to the page in question.

Assume you were looking at a service page on some website. If the path to that page led from the homepage, to the second menu on the homepage, to the fifth menu item in that menu, the breadcrumbs would look something like this:

Home > [Menu 2] > [Menu Item 5]

Because these breadcrumbs serve as links, clicking on the [Menu 2] breadcrumb would bring you to that menu’s page, allowing you to continue browsing from there.

More Than Simply Websites
You may also recognize this style of navigation from the toolbars of the folders and files saved to your system. This makes it easier to locate certain files again later and can be shared with another user if they need to know where a file is located.

In conclusion, breadcrumbs are specifically designed to make navigation and organization easier for the user. Can you think of any other features that do the same?