the hierarchical listing of a page's parent sections back to the root.
Of course this doesn't really jibe with the source of the term "Breadcrumbs"
("Hansel and Gretel" for those that don't know) which specifically dealt
with a user-defined path however circuitous it might be.
At DepressedPress.com I do both: there's traditional breadcrumb navigation
over the page title and a "clickstream" drop down in the navigation tools
area with lists the users actual visited pages.
As Isaac mentioned the clickstream is really replicated by the browser. The
only addition at DepressedPress.com is the ability (by clicking the word
"Clickstream" to see the pages you viewed and the time that you viewed them.
I'm also adding the ability to see the clickstreams of your previous visits
soon (I think this may have the potential to be more useful).
In reality this functionality really isn't useful for a site like
DepressedPress.com (there's just not enough content), but since I capture it
for personal review later it was nothing to dump it to the screen. For a
large, complex site this kind of clickstreaming could be more useful as most
browsers limit the useful display of history data to just a few items (I
believe it's six in IE). After that you must use the "History" feature
which can't be sorted by time of visit. very annoying.
My philosophy is that while it may not be very useful it could be useful to
somebody. While I wouldn't dump significant effort into it, if it's easy to
do, do it. The more navigation options (as long as they're clear) the
better - at least to a point. ;^)
Jim Davis
From: Andy Ousterhout [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 11:19 AM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: RE: Breadcrumbs - do you fully track users?
Jim,
I thought that breadcrumbs was the path you took, so you could go back 2-3
steps rather than using back/back, etc...
Andy
[Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
