Breadcrumb (navigation)

Breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs trail is a graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces. It allows users to keep track of their locations within programs, documents, or websites. The term comes from the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the fairy tale of the same name.

A breadcrumb trail tracks and displays each page viewed by a visitor of a website, either in the order the pages were viewed, 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.

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. A greater-than sign (>) often serves as hierarchy separator, although designers may use other glyphs (such as » or ›), as well as various graphical icons.

A breadcrumb trail or path based on viewing history is typically rendered as follows :

For instance, in this scenario, a website visitor views seven pages (note how the pages are tracked in order the user viewed them) :

Typical breadcrumbs following a hierarchical structure are shown as follows:

Current file managers including Windows Explorer (from Windows Vista onwards), Mac OS's Finder, GNOME's Nautilus, KDE's Dolphin, Xfce's Thunar, MATE's Caja, and SnowBird allow breadcrumb navigation, often replacing or extending an address bar.

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