Dynamic breadcrumbs replace the functionality of the browser’s Go-back-more-than-one-page button, and thus strike me as overkill. They also appear to require cookies to work
I don’t have a problem with the fact that they require cookies. They provide a potentially useful feature that augments the standard navigation, rather than replaces it – so someone who doesn’t have cookies isn’t going to be served a substandard page – they just won’t have this “bonus” feature.
And while it does, to some extent, duplicate the back feature of browsers, it does more than that – you can be going backwards and forwards through pages such that a page you visited doesn’t appear anywhere on your back/forwards list. Yes, there is also the history feature that most browsers include, but that isn’t always easy to use.
Thanks for a very interesting article. I must admit, as I was reading through it and flicking back to my site, I realised I was doing a number of things wrong.
Good article. A little obvious, but it definitely needs to be said.
You make a point that navigation should show the user where they’ve been, but you don’t show it in your tabbed example of Awesomeness.org. How would you treat that aspect of correct global navigation?
I believe in self-linking, and I too have 11 years of experience. Who knows if that really means anything though.
In a breadcrumb trail (dynamic or static), I wouldn’t allow the last item (the current page) to be a link. I also wouldn’t make the title of a page a link. If the content was dynamic, I’d add a link labelled ‘Permalink’ (or better ‘Permanent Link’ or ‘Bookmark this page’). If the content was dynamic, and reloading was useful, I’d add a link or button labelled ‘Reload’ or ‘Refresh’.
However, in the main navigation, I firmly believe in self-linking as main navigarion is often in the form of heirarchial menus. In there, every option should always be a link. Every other menu behaves like that on my computer. Just because I just copied a piece of text, the ‘Copy’ option in the edit menu isn’t disabled until I select something else. When I have a new document open, I can still create (another) new document.
In a menu, every option should be available. Elsewhere, don’t self-link without it being obvious why it’s a self-link.
When users “learn” through trial and error that the section ‘tab’ does not self-link, they would likely assume that the same behaviour applies to subsequent section pages. In that case users might think they have to click to another section in order to return to the top page in the current section.
While creating three modes for the section ‘tab’ is a good idea, I don’t think many typical users would notice a subtle variation between the selected state and the linkable-selected — Having to learn a new third mode might be more confusing than having a page self-link.
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Richard Curtis
An observation – clicking the Home link on the Flickr homepage changes the greeting between “Hi”, “Allo” and “Namaste” – English, French and ? (German?).
I think webmasters link to their current page because they think it will improve they’re on-page SEO. I can understand when a website uses a universal navigation bar with a “home” link to the index page, but other than that, I agree that they are annoying.
P.S. I’m so glad I found this site! I am an aspiring designer and it’s exactly what I was looking for!
Already I read user experience article… now this one also good… because I know the importance of the navigation in designer point of view. But this is good for user point of view. So this will help for me.
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frank grimes
If the intent to not allow links to the current is to identify the current position within the site, okay. The tab example works fine.
If a site is more complex, as suggested by the author, life is more complicated. A page navigated to from a drop-down menu is a different matter.
A site with a series of dropdown menus—either single- or multi-level—don’t benefit from the logic of page identification. Content, for me, always dictates the structure. If I can identify on the page the location within the site with breadcrumbs or page title (in the url or browser bar or within the page text), I will.
It’s my hope the viewer of my site is keen enough to understand where he or she is or, more importantly, how to find what he or she is looking for without visual cues in the navigation, but I also understand this is not always the case.
As I develop sites for my customers, I offer my advice and my insistence on standards, but ultimately, they pay me so they have the final say. Too often this results in navigation replete with redundant links, inconsistent arrangement or any such horrors.
My thought is if there is an active link to the page I’m on, so be it. It’s more important to me to have a consistency to the navigation. It’s been my experience that users find this more helpful.
94 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleStephen Down
I don’t have a problem with the fact that they require cookies. They provide a potentially useful feature that augments the standard navigation, rather than replaces it – so someone who doesn’t have cookies isn’t going to be served a substandard page – they just won’t have this “bonus” feature.
And while it does, to some extent, duplicate the back feature of browsers, it does more than that – you can be going backwards and forwards through pages such that a page you visited doesn’t appear anywhere on your back/forwards list. Yes, there is also the history feature that most browsers include, but that isn’t always easy to use.
Andrew Chilton
Thanks for a very interesting article. I must admit, as I was reading through it and flicking back to my site, I realised I was doing a number of things wrong.
My site will be updated fairly shortly!
Jason Spector
Good article. A little obvious, but it definitely needs to be said.
You make a point that navigation should show the user where they’ve been, but you don’t show it in your tabbed example of Awesomeness.org. How would you treat that aspect of correct global navigation?
Thanks.
Ricky Christie
I think if you can cancel out the confusion of an anchor link if you set the text of it into something like:
Scroll down to footer
Rick Measham
I believe in self-linking, and I too have 11 years of experience. Who knows if that really means anything though.
In a breadcrumb trail (dynamic or static), I wouldn’t allow the last item (the current page) to be a link. I also wouldn’t make the title of a page a link. If the content was dynamic, I’d add a link labelled ‘Permalink’ (or better ‘Permanent Link’ or ‘Bookmark this page’). If the content was dynamic, and reloading was useful, I’d add a link or button labelled ‘Reload’ or ‘Refresh’.
However, in the main navigation, I firmly believe in self-linking as main navigarion is often in the form of heirarchial menus. In there, every option should always be a link. Every other menu behaves like that on my computer. Just because I just copied a piece of text, the ‘Copy’ option in the edit menu isn’t disabled until I select something else. When I have a new document open, I can still create (another) new document.
In a menu, every option should be available. Elsewhere, don’t self-link without it being obvious why it’s a self-link.
Jay Rex
When users “learn” through trial and error that the section ‘tab’ does not self-link, they would likely assume that the same behaviour applies to subsequent section pages. In that case users might think they have to click to another section in order to return to the top page in the current section.
While creating three modes for the section ‘tab’ is a good idea, I don’t think many typical users would notice a subtle variation between the selected state and the linkable-selected — Having to learn a new third mode might be more confusing than having a page self-link.
Brad Rench
My apologies if this method was already covered elsewhere in this discussion … .
The way I achieved not having a link to the current page was to place a label inside each list item of my navigation menu:
<div id=“nav”>
<ul>
<li id=“someLink”>SomeText<label>SomeText</label></li>
…other <li>‘s …
</ul>
My global.css:
#nav li label
{
display:none;
}
On each individual page, I added a style something like:
#nav li#someLink a
{
display:none !important;
}
#nav li#someLink label
{
display:block !important;
}
The !important may not be necessary in all cases. It seemed to be necessary for me since I’m using ASP.NET with Themes.
One problem I can see with this method is that it’s adding <label>‘s to each page that aren’t used (except for the <label> for the current page).
Thoughts?
Brad
Richard Curtis
An observation – clicking the Home link on the Flickr homepage changes the greeting between “Hi”, “Allo” and “Namaste” – English, French and ? (German?).
Brad Rench
I believe “Namaste” is Hindi/Sanskrit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste
Brad Rench
I believe “Namaste” is Hindi/Sanskrit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste
Thierry Koblentz
I wrote a script awhile ago to take care of this:
“linktext”:http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/navigation_links_and_current_location.asp
Jason McElwaine
I think webmasters link to their current page because they think it will improve they’re on-page SEO. I can understand when a website uses a universal navigation bar with a “home” link to the index page, but other than that, I agree that they are annoying.
P.S. I’m so glad I found this site! I am an aspiring designer and it’s exactly what I was looking for!
krishnamoorthy manickam
Already I read user experience article… now this one also good… because I know the importance of the navigation in designer point of view. But this is good for user point of view. So this will help for me.
Thanks…
frank grimes
If the intent to not allow links to the current is to identify the current position within the site, okay. The tab example works fine.
If a site is more complex, as suggested by the author, life is more complicated. A page navigated to from a drop-down menu is a different matter.
A site with a series of dropdown menus—either single- or multi-level—don’t benefit from the logic of page identification. Content, for me, always dictates the structure. If I can identify on the page the location within the site with breadcrumbs or page title (in the url or browser bar or within the page text), I will.
It’s my hope the viewer of my site is keen enough to understand where he or she is or, more importantly, how to find what he or she is looking for without visual cues in the navigation, but I also understand this is not always the case.
As I develop sites for my customers, I offer my advice and my insistence on standards, but ultimately, they pay me so they have the final say. Too often this results in navigation replete with redundant links, inconsistent arrangement or any such horrors.
My thought is if there is an active link to the page I’m on, so be it. It’s more important to me to have a consistency to the navigation. It’s been my experience that users find this more helpful.