Breadcrumb navigation

Graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces

A breadcrumb or breadcrumb trail is a graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces and on web pages. It allows users to keep track and maintain awareness of their locations within programs, documents, or websites. The term alludes to the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the German fairy tale. or in other definitions, displaying a hierarchy of the current page in relation to the website's structure. Breadcrumbs are typically placed in horizontal form under the masthead or navigation of a website. They may be implemented with each part of the trail having a drop down menu of its own, as well as drag and drop support, as done in Windows Explorer.

Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a Web page, often below title bars or headers. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page or—in hierarchical site structures—the parent pages of the current one. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point. 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. Path: path breadcrumbs show users the steps they took to end up on current page.

Location breadcrumbs are not necessarily appropriate for sites whose content is so rich that single categories do not fully describe a particular piece of content. For this reason, a tag may be more appropriate, though breadcrumbs can still be used to allow the user to retrace their steps and see how they arrived at the current page.