Breadcrumbs -> absurd -> metaphor?

Breadcrumbs are a common user interface concept for navigation. It shows usally the shortest path in sites hierarchy down to the start page. We have them in Plone as well.

My son Torben (6) loves fairytales. Hansel and Gretel is a favorite. Reading and hearing the story several times makes me thinking about breadcrumbs. So I think: Who ever invented the metaphor for navigation had no kids (and no education, at least didnt knew the fairytale well).

Ok, it's a metaphor, in the fairytale Hansel and Gretel, the poor woodcutter child Hansel used breadcrumbs to lay a trace back home, while his parents tried to abandon the siblings the second time.  It looks like so far this fairytale is well known.

But is it a good metaphor?

No! Birds picked up Hansels trail of breadcrumbs. Hansel and Gretel got lost in the woods:

[...] 'Just wait, Gretel, until the moon rises, and then we shall see the
crumbs of bread which I have strewn about, they will show us our way
home again.' When the moon came they set out, but they found no
crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in the woods
and fields had picked them all up. Hansel said to Gretel: 'We shall
soon find the way,' but they did not find it. They walked the whole
night and all the next day too from morning till evening, but they did
not get out of the forest, [...]

And No. It does not show the path the user took from entry to the current page.

Darn.

The first time parents tried to get rid of them smart Hansel took "white pebbles which lay in front of the house glittered like real silver pennies. [...] And when the full moon had risen, Hansel took his little sister by the hand, and followed the pebbles which shone like newly-coined silver pieces, and showed them the way. They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came once more to their father's house."

So would we better call it "Pebble-Navigation". Well.

Fortunately breadcrumbs in navigation are more useful than in the fairytale. They do help visitors to get back to higher levels in navigation and show them where they are in the site. Jakob Nielsen wrote in his alertbox an interesting article pointing out the advantages. Site visitors are using breadcrumb-navigations.

There are also fresh ideas around, like a Tabbed Breadcrumb Navigation for both deep and wide structures.

Ergo -> Breadcrumbs -> a bad metaphor -> for a useful navigation concept.