What is a crumb trail in computing?

Answer 1

A crumb trail, breadcrumb trail or simply breadcrumbs, is a metaphor based upon the Hansel & Gretel fairy tale, whereby they children leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that they can find their way home after their poverty-stricken parents try to abandon them in the woods.

In computing, just as in Hansel & Gretel, a breadcrumb is a navigational aid. It helps you find your way back from whence you came.

Breadcrumbs initially appeared on the internet. Many websites (including answers.com) placed breadcrumbs at the top and/or bottom of the page to give a clear indication of where you are within the website's folder hierarchy, and allow you to backtrack to any depth more easily than you could by other navigational methods.

Breadcrumbs are also found in most operating systems these days, including Microsoft Windows. For instance, suppose you open an explorer window and navigate your way to the following folder on the C: drive:

C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Temp

In the address bar, you will see the breadcrumb, which looks something like this:

Computer ► C: ► Users ► Default ► AppData ► Local ► Temp

The breadcrumb is fully-interactive, thus you can click on any name (such as Default) and be taken there directly. Or you can click the ► arrows after a folder name to see a drop down list of all the folders it contains, and navigate to them directly from there. The breadcrumb does not replace the more traditional navigation methods, but it is more intuitive than simply displaying the path name as it used to do.