Breadcrumb needs adjusting

Erik

Well-known member
There are a few problems with the breadcrumb as it is currently implemented.

First, the homepage is the root of the breadcrumb, which doesn't really make much sense. Home and Forums are already separate in the primary navbar, so when you drill down into the Forums and see the breadcrumb, the Forums homepage should be the root, not the Home link. This just logically makes sense from a navigation and usability standpoint, at least in my opinion.

Secondly, it seems like the breadcrumb is 'off' when browsing through forums and threads.

For example, when I'm browsing the bug reports forum, I see this:

xhDdt.png


The bolding of "General Discussions" and the fact that it is the last item in the breadcrumb to me implies that I'm browsing that forum, but in fact I am browsing one of it's children, the XenForo Bug Reports forum. I repeatedly find myself clicking on a breadcrumb item only to be taken back one more level than I expected.

In my opinion, the breadcrumb should look like this when browsing the XenForo Bug Reports forum:

qP07l.png


i.e., the forum that you're currently browsing is the one that is bolded and the last item in the breadcrumb, not it's parent. This is how vBulletin does it:

etzDR.png


Thoughts?
 
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I suppose this the way it's being done now isn't technically "wrong", but it would sure take a lot of getting used to and it's a bit confusing to the user. :)
 
Strangely enough, I get something different. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. But I get the "XenForo Bug Reports" in my navbar.
 

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Strangely enough, I get something different. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. But I get the "XenForo Bug Reports" in my navbar.

Yeah, as Mark mentioned it's the same. In the screenshot, you're browsing this thread, so really the thread title should be in bold at the end of the breadcrumb. Sorry, I should have probably done it from the viewpoint of a thread (instead of a forum listing) to make it less confusing. :)
 

The last entry in the bread crumb above is actually "XenForo Bug Reports". However it is also the page title. It should not be a link as you are already there and can simply refresh the page. The other three entries are the levels above it. Furthermore "Forums" should only be the top level if indeed it is the top level. In this case it isn't as the forums are in a subdirectory.

Seems to be working as best practices for breadcrumbs state.
 
I implemented the vB4 style breadcrumb on my vB3 site, (well nicked eh?) so that it's all in one line rather than the default vB3 system of dropping the final bit onto a new line.

One of the issues I have, with me using a fixed width style, is that I had to write a quick plugin to create a trimmed version of the thread title if it was too long, otherwise longer ones wrapped down and broke the style.
 

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Personally, I like the way breadcrumbs work now (redirect to frontpage, instead of a separate category page). Not to mention that you avoid a ton of duplicate links and become Google's friend... :)
 
I'm getting used to the new format, but I still think it's a bit counter-intuitive, especially with the last item in the breadcrumb row bolded. As far as having Home at the root of the breadcrumb, well I think that's highly debatable. :)
 
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