Hal Shubin has posted a summary on the ACM CHI-WEB forum about 3 different types of Breadcrumbs,
- Path: Shows the pages you clicked on.
- Location: The place in the information hierarchy where the current page fits or is stored.
- Attribute: A set of meta-information describing the page.
It is an interesting read, covering an overview of how Breadcrumbs were orignally used and named, plus lots of interesting replys, and references to external links including, Hal Shubin’s 2002 presentation on Web Navigation.
Here are some other related links and definitions:
1. A breadcrumb definition from Motive.
2. Jakob Nielsen’s deep linking AlertBox article.
3. Jared M. Spool on the value of breadcrumbs in UIE Brain sparks.
4. Keith Instone’s analysis of Location, Path & Attribute Breadcrumbs from 2002.