Hansel and Gretel
In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, the two children leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way out of the forest. Unfortunately, in the story the breadcrumbs were eaten by birds, thus making this a less-than-ideal navigational aid. In their first foray into the forest they used white pebbles, certainly a superior navigational aid to using breadcrumbs.
Microsoft’s new way to navigate around your computer’s system uses the revamped Address Bar, called the “Breadcrumb Bar” by some. If you are a student of Fairy Tales perhaps this is an unfortunate choice of name, as in the case of Hansel and Gretel, it certainly was a poor result.
But to get down to serious business! The new Address Bar aka Breadcrumb Bar is a major development in windows navigation. It first appeared in Windows Vista and continued in Windows 7.
Vista's Address Bar
However, Breadcrumb Navigation originated in web design where developers used it to facilitate quick web navigation. Breadcrumb Navigation has become increasingly popular, not only in operating systems and applications, but also on the Web.
Here are two examples from the web.
Examples of Web Breadcrumb Bars
Navigating Drives and Folders
In Windows XP, Desktop Navigation involved using the Back and Forward buttons and the Up button to move through drives and folders in Windows Explorer.
Windows XP Navigation
Using the Address Bar
When Microsoft developed Windows Vista, they decided to use the “breadcrumb” method for navigating through the maze of folders and sub-folders. In both Windows Vista and Windows 7, the Address Bar appears at the top of every folder window and displays your current location as a series of links separated by arrows.
They left out the redoubtable Up button, leaving the Back and Forward arrows but adding the Recent Pages button. This works in a similar fashion to the Up button in Windows XP.
Windows 7's Address Bar Features
You will find the Address Bar, located on the left-hand top of every folder in the following windows.
- My Desktop
- Documents
- Pictures
- Music
- HomeGroup
- Videos
- Downloads
- Recorded TV
- Games
- Computer
- Network
- Control Panel
- Devices and Printers
- Default Programs
The Address Bar displays your current location as a path or a breadcrumb trail of links separated by arrows.
If you start off in the Libraries window, clicking on the right facing arrow opens a drop-down list of individual libraries. From here you can navigate to any of the five libraries just by clicking its name.
Remember! Each time you click on the arrow icon, a drop down menu appears listing all the sub folders contained in that particular folder.
Navigation Table for the Address Bar (Breadcrumb)
Table showing Address Bar Features
