Title	"Your Trail:" continues forever.
Date	24-Nov-2005 04:25:58 EET
Version	2.2.32
Submitter	204.50.113.28
Bug criticality	CosmeticBug
Browser version	Firefox 1.5 RC2 / IE 6
Bug status	ClosedBug
PageProvider used	http://jspwiki.org/
Servlet Container
Operating System	Windows XP / Windows Server 2000
URL	http://jspwiki.org/
Java version

When clicking around on a web page, the "Your Trail" list is generated by concatenating the most recent page visited to the end of the list. This results in an odd bread crumb trail.

-- Repro Steps ---

[1] Go to jspwiki.org [2] Select "Main Page" from the side bar [3] Select "News" from the side bar [4] Select "Main Page" from the side bar

The "Your Trail" list now reads: Main > News > Main

[5] Select "Index" from the side bar [6] Select "Main Page" from the side bar

The "Your Trail" list now reads: Main > News > Main > Index > Main

-- Expected Behaviour ---

Users of standard web sites expect the breadcrumb trail to resolve your position in the hierarchy of pages. The trail in JSPWiki is counterintuitive to how most pages display.

In short, I would expect that every element in the list of node appear only once.

From the above example, steps 1..3 should produce: Main > News Step 4 should produce: Main > Steps 1..6 should produce: Index > Main

---

On the one hand I agree that the trail is counterintuitive, on the other hand there is no such thing as a "hierarchy" of pages, and the "expected behavior" described above seems to be similarly counterintuitive. Do you really mean I should loose information about all the 10 recently visited pages, just because I happen to return to Main, Index, or Changes?

However, I am not very happy with breadcrumbs as it is, because of the repeating of pages. Perhaps a concept of "recently visited pages" would be more useful to users of the wiki? This list could easily be sorted in sequence of visit, but returning to Main should bring Main into first place and remove from previous occurrence. The separator should be comma rather the, then misleading ">". -- Gregor Hagedorn.

---

Well... The breadcrumbs are really your history (if you look at your browser history, it's the same thing). And you can change the separator with your own wiki.

I agree that there is no concept of hierarchy in a wiki. Hm. I don't quite know what to do to this... I'll leave it open and let people write their own opinions on what they like here for a while, and let's revisit this after a while.

-- JanneJalkanen

---

Hi there,

you could implement a stack of visited pages so, when you click on an item of the breadcrumb, you discard the pages on top of this item in the stack. The maximum items on the stack could be set via jspwiki.properties for example. I think this is more intuitive than the suggested behaviour.

-- JP at http://www.lacoctelera.com/foobar

---

I think that once people realise that the breadcrumbs are a history, and not a hierarchy, it all makes sense.

Perhaps the real problem is with using the ">" character.

PhilWilson

---

You might be right. What could be better? A comma?

-- JanneJalkanen

---

Hi, I think that breadcrumbs, in almost all webapps I've seen with breadcrumbs (or at least very very frequently), behave like a hierarchy. If you want the breadcrumb to behave with the "history" paradigm I think it would be better to replace the "Your trail:" text with "Your nav. history:", "Recent pages:" or whatsoever rather than changing the ">" character

In my current project we have a couple of apps all with hierarchy-breadcrums so I thought the "hierarchy" paradigm could suit better (it's behaviour is like the rest). I've downloaded the source code and made the necessary modifications to achieve this behaviour (i'm going attach it to the page).

The modifications are heavily commented so they are easy to check. They take place in com.ecyrd.jspwiki.tags.BreadcrumbsTag.java and in Wiki.jsp

-- JP at http://www.lacoctelera.com/foobar

woops seems I uploaded a wrong version of the class... I've just uploaded the correct version, BreadcrumbsTag_fixed.java

-- JP at http://www.lacoctelera.com/foobar

Hierarchy breadcrumbs don't make sense here since wikis by concept are not set up as a hierarchy. I think the breadcrumbs are fine as they are, but maybe a queue like structure that holds your recent history pages if you think its necessary. Also, by default I think the amount of pages thats displayed in your trail should only be like five. Some wiki pages have long names and all those links up there can be a little crazy.

-- Alex Reid

My guess is it's WAD, so let us close this bug.

-- Harry Metske