When most people talk about breadcrumbs, the fairy tale about Hansel and Gretel comes to mind because of the trail of breadcrumbs they left on the path from their home. When Web designers talk about breadcrumbs, the concept is similar, but the path is navigation within a Web site. Breadcrumbs are typically used to supplement the navigation provided by menu and submenu options, recognizing that sometimes, you don't want to restart at the beginning.

A good examples of breadcrumbs on a Web site is Craigslist. For example, looking at Craigslist's Portland site, when I select Rideshare, the first text I see at the top left of the page shows the breadcrumbs: Portland Craigslist > rideshare. If I select one of the areas within Portland, such as Multnomah county, the breadcrumbs adjust to Portland Craigslist > Multnomah county > rideshare. (Noting that the rideshare breadcrumb changed from the Portland rideshare link to the Portland, Multnomah county rideshare link.)

Each step of navigation gives you the opportunity to return to any of the previous navigation points within that path. The breadcrumbs within Craigslist offer a consistent navigation option across their entire site; the breadcrumbs on Craigslist for Mexico follow the same pattern as those for Portland.

The breadcrumbs only show you the path that you have followed; if you want to follow different paths within the site, you navigate back to where your next path splits off; breadcrumbs are frequently your easiest navigation option at that point, especially compared to using the back button repeatedly.

-- Frances

There's a new browser in town... kind of. By "kind of," I mean that Google Chrome is in beta testing, which means it's available to the public with the expectation that there will be bugs and the users will report them. It's also "kind of" new because it's based on Apple Inc's Safari browser and uses some components of the Firefox browser.

So how is Chrome different, other than having a logo that seriously reminds me of Milton Bradley's Simon?



When you start up Chrome, it starts with an empty address bar, rather than starting on a designated page. Instead, you see screens from a selection of Web sites you've visited; it's titled Most Visited, and includes a search box to "Search your history." That's assuming you weren't browsing in Chrome's "incognito mode," which doesn't record into your Web history.

The address bar is also used for Web searches, including searching your Web history. You can type in your search term in the address bar, and as you're typing, any site in your Web history that includes your search term will appear in a dropdown and can be selected. If nothing appears in the dropdown, because you haven't visited a page with that term recently, you press enter when you finish typing and view a Google results page.

If you accidentally open a new tab instead of a new window, you can just drag the new tab out of the browser window, and it becomes a new window. That's kind of neat. And so is the ability to drag them back in or rearrange them within your browser window. But a major highlight is that if one tab crashes, it's the only one that does; each tab runs independently, and can crash (or hopefully not) on its own.

You can easily build your bookmark collection using the star icon to the left of the address bar; at setup, you also have the option of importing your settings from Firefox or Internet Explorer. And, if you have some free time, they even put together a comic explaining Chrome: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html.

Overall, I have to say I'm impressed. I'm not sure I'm switching away from Firefox... yet... but it definitely has potential. Of course, I'm still getting used to Firefox 3, and I haven't even tried the beta of Internet Explorer 8 yet, so there's a lot of new browser functionality out there to try.

-- Frances