idea: breadcrumbs should be nested lists

[alinome.net]

I think it's an accesibility must: breadcrumbs must be nested lists, made horizontal and inline with CSS.
That's the same logic CSS menus have.

I am a CMSMS beginner, and I have chosen it for a project because CMSMS cares a lot about accesibility. It was a surprise,
when I realized that breadcrumbs are not nested lists but simple links.

You can see an example in this deep level page of a site of mine (not by CMSMS, though, but a HTML preprocessor programmed by me in Forth), telling your browser to turn off CSS:

alinome.net/bici/con_bici01_p5.es.html

I'm investigating this issue for another site of mine (by CMSMS, this one):

alinome.net/fincasantmiquel

I will contact the author of the breadcrumb function with this suggestion.

Marcos

[tsw]

you are right.

after all, it is a list of links..

tho I'm not sure if a deep list is a good choice. maybe have list instead...

[Manarth]

The important thing to keep in mind is the target audience for accessibility features, and imagine their interaction.

Breadcrumbs represent a path to the current page, and therefore have similarities to a page menu, but they do have a different purpose, so shouldn't necessarily be constrained by the same logic.

Whilst a breadcrumb trail could be represented by a hierarchical menu, there would be only one element per menu item.  As it's also a linear descriptor, it is syntactically and semantically correct to use a paragraph ("I started on this page, progressed through pages w, x,  y, and finished on page z").

I was involved in user-testing research which showed Visually Impaired People (the primary target audience for accessibility development) found a paragraph breadcrumb trail more usable than a hierarchical list: they found lists which contained only a single element confusing.

[amygdela]

What I also dislike of the breadcrumbs is that the currently active page is displayed in bold. Can't it be a span with a class, so I don't have to add to my CSS something like

.breadcrumbs { font-weight: normal !important; }

?

[alinome.net]

Whilst a breadcrumb trail could be represented by a hierarchical menu, there would be only one element per menu item.  As it's also a linear descriptor, it is syntactically and semantically correct to use a paragraph ("I started on this page, progressed through pages w, x,  y, and finished on page z").
I was involved in user-testing research which showed Visually Impaired People (the primary target audience for accessibility development) found a paragraph breadcrumb trail more usable than a hierarchical list: they found lists which contained only a single element confusing.

That's very interesting. I was thinking about the code logic, I mean, how to represent the "meaning" with XHTML.
But now I see that in fact the main goal is the target user. I will search additional info to compare opinions.

[tsw]

What I also dislike of the breadcrumbs is that the currently active page is displayed in bold. Can't it be a span with a class, so I don't have to add to my CSS something like

I actually fixed this in svn few days back (but after 1.0.4 was released, sorry)

[Manarth]

What I also dislike of the breadcrumbs is that the currently active page is displayed in bold. Can't it be a span with a class, so I don't have to add to my CSS something like

.breadcrumbs { font-weight: normal !important; }

?

Here's the produced code for a sample breadcrumb trail:

Code: Select all

   <!-- Start Breadcrumbs -->
   <div class="breadcrumbs">
        You are here: <a href="http://demo.opensourcecms.com/cms/index.php?page=home">Home</a> » <strong>Youth Page</strong>
   <hr class="accessibility" />
   </div>
   <!-- End Breadcrumbs -->

All you need to do is style the strong element appropriately:

Code: Select all

.breadcrumbs strong {
  font-weight: normal;
}

The advantage for using strong, as opposed to a classed span, is that it stands out semantically and in css-disabled browsers.