[thelist] sites with breadcrumb history implementations

[Ian Anderson]

Christian Heilmann wrote:

> We did implement those once, but deleted them after some user
> testing. The problem is that user visits are not straight forward and
> you might end up with a lot of entries. Furthermore you need to
> filter out already visited pages. All in all what you with those is
> simulate the browser history, and users are much more likely to hit
> the back button than use those links.
> 
> Hierachical breadcrumbs, on the other hand do get used a lot.

Definitely seconded; I have also seen some horribly confusing ones, 
though thankfully they don't appear too often.

The example shown looks too like a regular hierarchical breadcrumb 
trail, even though it has an actual label to say what it is.

The worst thing is if it looks totally like a hierarchical one without 
any labelling. For example, if it was in the style linkone > linktwo > 
linkthree it would be even worse.

This style isssue also applies to normal links - it's a pet hate of mine 
when sibling links are shown in breadcrumb style, and conversely when 
breadcrumb trails use | instead of > or /

History trails seem to offer little of value to the user. To be of any 
use at all, they'd need to be pretty verbose. I'm sure it also depends 
on the target audience.

I think a key factor is also where they are on the screen. If it's at 
the top, you're definitely creating more problems than you solve. At the 
bottom, perhaps fewer.

I think the key thing is the separators - using actual arrows may make 
the difference between this thing and a hierarchical breadcrumb trail 
more clear.

Cheers

Ian

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