breadcrumbs

(After the story "Hansel and Gretel" by the Brothers Grimm).

1. <World-Wide Web> Links displayed across the top of a web page listing the most recently visited pages so the reader can quickly jump back to one. Since this function is provided by the web browser, breadcrumbs are a waste of space.

A better use of the space is to display links to the page's logical parent pages in the information hierarchy.

2. <programming> Information output by statements inserted into a program for debugging by printf.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

breadcrumbs

A description of the trail you took to arrive at your current location. Text breadcrumbs are common on websites to help users navigate the site. For example, breadcrumbs such as Products->TVs->Plasma indicate that the Plasma TV Products page you are looking at was retrieved by first clicking Products, then TVs and then Plasma.

From Hansel and Gretel
The term comes from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. When their father took them into the woods to abandon them, the children dropped crumbs of bread along the way to leave a trail back home.

Windows Breadcrumbs

Starting with Windows Vista, the Explorer file manager displays each element in the path to a file as a clickable breadcrumb. In the example above, any of the elements between the arrows can be clicked to jump to that level.

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