Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trails is a navigation technique used in user interfaces. Its purpose is to give users a way to keep track of their location within programs or documents. The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...

The technique takes its name from the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairytale. Breadcrumbs or bread crumbs are small particles of dry or very dry bread, which are used for breading foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thickening stews, and adding inexpensive bulk to meatloaves and similar dishes. ... Gretel tricks the witch Hansel and Gretel (German: Hänsel und Gretel) is a fairy tale of Germanic origin, collected by the Brothers Grimm. ...

Websites

Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a webpage. They provide links back to each previous page that the user navigated through in order to get to the current page. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting/entry point of a website. They may look something like this:

 Home page → Section page → Sub section page 

There are three types of web breadcrumbs:

Path

Path breadcrumbs are dynamic and show the path that the user has taken to arrive at a 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.

GPS

Advanced GPS tools may keep track of the motion of a GPS device bearer by recording the positions of the traveller at specified time moments and presenting them at a GPS display as a "breadcrumb trail" of position markers. Over fifty GPS satellites such as this NAVSTAR have been launched since 1978. ...

External links

• Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage by Bonnie Lida Rogers and Barbara Chaparro, 2003
• Influence of Training and Exposure on the Usage of Breadcrumb Navigation by Spring S. Hull, 2004
• Location, Path & Attribute Breadcrumbs by Keith Instone