UESPWiki:Community Portal/Bread Crumb Trail

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

Contents 1 2006-11 2 2007-01

[edit] 2006-11

I just changed the bread crumb trails so that they appear on the top right of the screen on the same link as the title instead of on the top of the page. I also changed the ": " separators into " → " separators to take advantage of our UTF-8 character encoding. Let me know how you all like the changes. --Aristeo | Talk 02:45, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Strongly dislike. Please change it back. Here's why:

• UI elements that navigate upwards should be in a consistent place. For standard monobook, that's on the topish leftish side of the page. Note that the backpage link of subpages use this same logic -- i.e., top left side of page.
• Aside from that, putting the bread crumb on the same line as the page title is also inconsistent since, for section titles, that part of the line is reserved for the section [Edit] link. Again, UI wise, Edit is a "do something about this particular thing". I.e., it's for moving down the hieararchy. UI wise, "right == drill down" behavior reinforces the "left == go up" behavior. These little details are not accidents -- whoever originally desiged the monospace page layout would have intentionally used simple rules like this is in laying out the page elements.
• The new location is harder to find. It doesn't stand out enough. The previous font and box worked much better. Again, not an accident. When I first created the bread crumb trail, I tried just about every combination of borders, line spacing, font, separator character that I could think of. In the end, the box stood out just enough to be useful: visually distinct from the rest of the page, easy to find and standing out as a navigational element, but without being too large or otherwise distracting from the rest of the page. Granted, there can be some personal judgement in such questions, but I haven't seen a lot (any?) complaints with difficulty in using the existing bread crumb layout. Which brings us to the "If it ain't broke..." objection...
• Aside from that, it's a change from what people were used to, which in itself makes it harder to find for experienced users. Fundamental rule: Don't change established design elements unless it's a strong improvmement.
• Arrow: I don't like that as much either. It's too wide and requires additional spacing. (vs. a colon, which requires no preceding space. Again, I tried several variations when first creating the bread crumb. Some sites (e.g., yahoo groups) use ">", but in my tests that seemed to work only if you added an extra space ahead of it and made the whole line bold -- which made the whole line standout too much.
• PageName: Not necessary, since for the original crumb trail layout, the page name appeared right under the title.

--Wrye 16:36, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Additional Problem: For some pages with long hierarchies and page names, the same line text can overlap on narrower monitors/windows. And even where it does not overlap can look unattractively cluttered. E.g., Tes3Mod:ClearForceMoveJump. --Wrye 19:43, 27 November 2006 (EST)

The problem with the principle of the logic that you presented is that the pages on the wiki cannot be organized into a strict hierarchy. Our wiki, as with most other wikis, are organized into a more general directed acyclic graph. For example, Oblivion:Ingredients belongs to Oblivion:Items and Oblivion:Alchemy. Oblivion:Alchemy belongs to Oblivion:Skills and Oblivion:Magic. Et cetera. Pages that have only one parent are usually miscellaneous pages whose parent is Oblivion:Oblivion because they cannot go deeper into the categorization system. Of course, these trails only contain the link to the main Oblivion portal, which is a redundant and space-wasting link because the link is already found on the left-hand menu.

Wikipedia had a similar situation around late-2003 to the situation that I described about the breadcrumbs. They introduced the subpage feature to eliminate disambiguation and to create topic-based hierarchies of articles. Instead of browsing to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat, you would browse to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology/Transportation/Vehicles/Boat. If there happened to be a music album from Prince entitled "Boat", then you could set up something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment/Music/Albums/Boat, which would effectively eliminate disambiguation. This system proved to be unworkable and eventually failed because subjects tend to belong in more than one hierarchy, as I described earlier. The current disambiguation system that we use (ex. Oblivion:Weynon Priory (quest) vs. Oblivion:Weynon Priory (place)) was eventually adopted, and in mid-2004 the categorization system was introduced which supported hierarchial setups while still allowing articles be in multiple categories.

So as you can see, breadcrumbs are ineffective because of the redundancy of one-tier trails and because of the erroneousness of multi-tier trails. The categorization system fixes this situation by allowing pages to have more than one category, and miscellaneous pages can have as broad of a category as necessary. One may argue that the breadcrumbs allow readers and editors to quickly navigate to the main parent (the mom?) of the article, but this only saves the user from making one click, if any, and the bulkiness of that is required to display this exiguous link is definitely not worth the cost.

My alteration to the bread crumb trails is a solution to temporarily satisfy both the advocates of removing breadcrumbs and the advocates of keeping them. Although not all of my issues were addressed, this elimated the bulkiness and interferrence that the breadcrumbs created without completely removing them. After reading over your concerns, I can't help but have the feeling that you're only against the change because of personal preferences, which are important, but they simply cannot be a guiding principle towards a large-scale change. --Aristeo | Talk 00:00, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Ignored Arguments: Arguments about recognized usability standards? My point that the new layout results in overlap for certain pages? Simply ignored! Or rather dismissed as "personal preference". Here's a thought, next time try answering the argument, rather than brushing it off as "personal preference."

However, backing up, you make clear that your real position is that we shouldn't have bread crumb trails at all. So apparently your reformatting is simply a way to brush them out of the way (eliminate them without completely removing them).

Absence of Pre-Discussion: Now you have some good arguments here, but the problem is that you made rather sweeping changes with no apparent community discussion! You refer to "advocates of removing breadcrumbs and the advocates of keeping them" - really? Where? I don't see any such discussion on this page, where it certainly should have been before such a sweeping change took place.

Page Hierarchy: So, engaging in that discussion... The question is to what degree can UESP be seen as hierarchical? Your argument is that UESP articles are directed acyclic graph. I.e., in less fancy terms, it's not hierarchical. However, while there is some truth in this, most articles in UESP are hierarchical to a fair degree. This truth is supported by the presence of link pages, which recognize that hierarchy. E.g., if I want to look over Morrowind Books, they're all in the same group. If I want to look over one of the Hlaalu quests, then it's under the hierarchy "Morrowind: Quests: Hlaalu".

Looking at the area I'm most familiar with... The Morrowind modding pages are deeply and clearly hierarchical, and are strongly helped by having a set of link pages and an obvious crumb trail. E.g., the scripting page referred to above. It is definitely useful to be within any page in the modding category and to go up one level. Nor is it "just one click" to reach such pages from the top level without the modding trail. E.g., from the Tes3Mod:Activate activate page... Going up one level with the crumb trail is one click. Compare that with reaching that page from the top level: 1) click on "Morrowind" in left navbar, 2) scroll down, find "Modding", 3) click on Modding, 4) scroll down, find "Alphabetical Function List", 5) click on "Alphabetical Function List". I.e., that's 5 control actions instead of one. It was precisely to eliminate this hassle that I added crumb trails.

There's the argument that this hierarchy could be handled with categories, but the problem with categories is that they only organize the information alphabetically. When the information is pretty clearly hierarchical, then a link page is better because it is better able to organize the information (e.g., Tes3Mod:Modding). Categories can be used to augment built link pages, but their lack of intelligent structure means that they are certainly not a replacement for them.

Note that UESP, while built on the same engine is not always comparable to Wikipedia -- our structure is more hierarchical than Wikipedia, and so while categories work well for Wikipedia, a more structured hierarchy works better for UESP. For an interesting comparison, see Wikibooks, e.g. a Haskell book chapter. Here, subpaging is used to express hierarchy. Wikipedia is good as guide for us, but it's simply not going to fit everything that we do. As wikibooks does, we should adopt our use of the software to fit our own needs, rather than follow Wikipedia usage slavishly. Hierarchically, UESP falls between Wikipedia (rather flat) and Wikibooks (strongly structured). Accordingly, our use of crumb trails and categories should be mixed -- strong hierarchy where it makes sense, but use of categories to expand that as necessary.

As for your items/alchemy example, there are a simple solution. If the page strongly belongs under both hierarchies, then use both in the crumb trail. That's long been done on the modding pages and it works well. E.g., script command pages clearly belong under Morrowind:Modding, but do they belong under Alphabetical scripting or Functional scripting? Both are useful... So we did both. Again see Tes3Mod:Activate. Or similarly, for some pages that belong under both modding and mod management Tes3Mod:GMST Contamination. We've been using this for a long time and it's both clear and useful.

Pages without hierarchy... Offhand, I don't know of any pages that fit into this category (at least not under any of the games), however theoretically it's possible. In which case, don't use a crumb trail. It's true that the top level index pages don't need a crumb trail (since you can use the left navbar), however for navigational continuity with their subpages, they seem to work better with the minimal trail present.

Recap:

1. You introduced a fairly sweeping change with no apparent discussion. (Or at least not on this page or the admin noticeboard, which is where such sweeping changes should be discussed.)
2. You failed to answer my original usability arguments.
3. You introduced new arguments arguing against having crumb trails, to which I've just responded.

--Wrye 17:59, 28 November 2006 (EST)

I don't agree that it would have been in the best interest of the wiki to propose the idea before making the change. Like Nephele said below, I wouldn't have been able to adequately describe my proposal without actually making the change. Also, it would be very easy to revert the modifications to the individual breadcrumbs themselves if necessary, so I don't see any problems.

I also don't agree with the "left side navigates up and the right side navigates down" arguement at all. The left side of the page navigates all over the place, and the right side of the page only contains links to user related pages as well as the section edit pages. Perhaps someone could expand on this arguement a little better?

Wrye, I don't like how you are accusing me of a conspiracy. I feel like the site would be improved if we completely removed the breadcrumbs – does that mean that my change was some sort of first step in order to get them out of the way? No, I'm trying to create a compromise by using the consensus decision-making process to find the middle ground in which the largest amount of people can support a decision as possible. Also, you seem to imply that I should have responded to each one of your individual arguements, and that by not responding I was "ignoring them". You should respect that it is up to my discretion to respond as I see fit. I felt at that time it was counterproductive to reply to those comments because I did not have any sort of contributive statements to make.

About my personal preference comment, I was mainly referring to the bit about the arrows vs. colons. I made that change because the colons were not as noticeable with the reduced font. The only arguement I saw against them was that Wrye didn't like the arrows because they were wider that what he would have preferred and required an extra space. Since we don't have a shortage on spaces or on width, the only logical explanation I could find was that it was only his personal preference to have the ": " spacing. Or perhaps I don't grasp the reasoning behind his statement.

I implemented all of Daveh's suggestions, which in turn may have implemented a couple of Wrye's. In addition, I'm thinking about replacing the " → " with a template that will allow everyone to adjust the breadcrumb spacing based on their personal preferences. If anyone has any good suggestions on how else I can try to improve the breadcrumbs so that everyone can be happy, I'd love to hear them. --Aristeo | Talk 21:25, 29 November 2006 (EST)

After seeing for a few days I don't particularily like the current version. There are a few things that I can see as being improved:

• No solid color background. Keep it transparent.
• Preferably keep it floating above/below the horizontal rule from the title. The rule should continue to the right border of the page with the trail resting on/below it.
• Smaller font like the previous trail format.
• While I try to stay out of design discussion, I would still prefer discussion whenever anyone wishes to make this sort of change (unless there was and I missed it, either way I should have known about it). Trails are a significant part of the site navigation and I was surprised to see them 'disappear' from their previous location all of a sudden.
• I'm not sure about whether right or left alignment is best. I like the previous left alignment but perhaps with the above changes a right alignment would look fine. If its on the left, though, you don't need to repeat the current page name which makes it shorter.

-- DaveH 18:53, 28 November 2006 (EST)

This change was brought up in IRC before being implemented, and I suggested that Aristeo should perhaps proceed to make the change and then ask for people's reaction to the change, primarily because it's always easier to comment on something that is visible, as opposed to commenting on an idea that you don't necessarily understand. Also, I was expecting that the only change to be implemented at this point was the change in location of the bread crumb trail, i.e., a single change that would be easy to modify (or even revert) based upon everyone's feedback. I do agree with Wrye's point that the primary forum for discussing changes should be on the wiki, rather than on IRC, so that everyone who is interested can participate in the discussion, but I don't know that that always means that no changes can be tested until everyone has discussed the idea. If a modification is easy to implement and easy to reverse, I think a viable option is to try out the change and then ask for reactions; that is how most actions tend to be implemented on the wiki.

I agree with the basic motivation behind this change, which is to try to make the bread crumb trail take up less space on the screen. I like the bread crumb trails, and use them frequently for navigation, for many of the reasons cited by Wrye. I don't think that categories are a replacement for bread crumb trails (in particular, the category links at the bottom of the page lead to unformatted lists of pages; I prefer to use the bread crumb trails that lead to the formatted wiki pages which have more information and provide that information in a logically sorted layout). However, the bread crumb trails were taking up a fair bit of space on the most important part of the page, namely the first few lines below the title. When working with a half-size browser window (which I frequently do when cutting and pasting from other windows), generally all that would show up when I first opened a page was the title and bread crumb trail. I think that the first few lines of the page are too valuable as real estate to be devoted solely to the bread crumb trail, especially if there are other options for where to place it. And I have heard comments from other visitors to the site that suggest that other readers feel the same way.

So the intention here was to keep the bread crumb trail still easily accessible at the top of the page, but move it up into "dead space" on the page, so that the rest of the page contents could move up and become more accessible.

As for the details of the change:

• I agree with several of DaveH's suggestions, in particular transparent background and make the rule under the title extend to the right border.
• I preferred the text on top of the line, rather than below the line. Moving it below the line takes away one of the primary advantages of the move, namely preventing the bread crumb trail from adding vertical space to the page.
• I don't have too much of a preference in terms of font size. Smaller size reduces the problem of overlapping text, but does make it harder to notice and use the bread crumb trail.
• I don't have too much of a preference in terms of the symbol used to separate the items in the trail.
• I don't like having the name of the page added to the end of the trail. It is redundant information that is already available on the same line; it does not provide any type of navigational purpose. And it makes it much more likely that the bread crumb trail and the page title will overlap.

I'd like to see whether it is possible to make this change work by continuing to tweak the format, rather than just abandoning the entire idea. Of course, if even after trying to address the problems raised by Wrye there is a consensus that the change is unworkable, we should go back to the original layout. But first I think it's worth trying to put some more effort into this, and it would also be useful to get feedback from some more members of the community to see what everyone's impression is. --Nephele 22:31, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Quick note: People who beta tested the skin have non-transparent backgrounds on the trails. I fixed this problem for the majority of you. If you still see the non-transparent backgrounds on the trails, hard refresh a page on the wiki and make sure your local copy of monobook.css is blanked. Thanks! --Aristeo | Talk 23:48, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Personally, I'm with Wrye, i.e. I liked the previous crumb trails better. However, here's another idea: why not use a similar format and placement as for the subpage trails? Furhtermore, I think this change should have been discussed here, if not announced at least, and in the future I would try to introduce such changes in a sandbox page first for everyone to comment on. --DrPhoton 03:47, 29 November 2006 (EST)

Re the current below the line arrangement... Again, it should still be on the left for reasons given above. Theoretically, I wouldn't mind it being on the same line as the "The UESP..." blurb, but there's still an overlap problem with that arragement (again, see Tes3Mod:Activate). Simplest solution is to just toss the "The UESP..." blurb entirely. Do that and maybe synchronize font size with the subpage link. --Wrye 20:05, 29 November 2006 (EST)

I guess that would work. Personally, I'd hate to see the sub title go as we have had it for quite some time, but I have no practical arguement to keep it. --Aristeo | Talk 21:25, 29 November 2006 (EST)

Maybe that can go over the line to the left. --DrPhoton 03:57, 30 November 2006 (EST)

Nephele's point is that vertical space at the beginning of the article is valuable real estate on some monitors. If it goes over the line, then it uses up vertical space. If it goes on the line, then it overlaps the title text for some pages. If you put it on the title line, it would still overlap some page titles. And it's basically an advert for UESP -- but at this point, I think we can assume that users know they're on UESP. So, in other words, the benefit is not worth the cost to keep it at the top. Hmmm... Could be added to the page footer though.--Wrye 14:05, 30 November 2006 (EST)

Unfortunately, I don't think that under the line on the left works for the bread crumb trail. Even taking out the UESP banner, there is other text that appears in that location. In particular, I've noticed that when looking at the difference between two page versions, "Difference between revisions" is placed there, resulting in unattractive overlapping text. I think on the right side is overall the best choice. --Nephele 14:55, 30 November 2006 (EST)

I'm afraid it's not technically possible, at least not with my controls. Daveh might be able to do something, but I don't think trial and error with the code of the wiki is such a good idea. What I'll do is set the background color of the breadcrumbs to the same color as what it's sitting on, so that if they do overlap, the breadcrumbs will have precedence. Also, I have a couple questions I want to ask everyone:

1. Should I remove the " → {{PAGENAME}}" section from the breadcrumbs?
2. Should I replace the " → " section with a template that would allow us to mass change the separators more easily?

Thanks for the input, everyone! --Aristeo | Talk 17:32, 30 November 2006 (EST)

Moved from Community Portal. --Wrye 18:50, 8 December 2006 (EST)

[edit] 2007-01

I was thinking about reverting the new layout of the breadcrumbs to the old layout, since there was no consensus to keep the breadcrumbs looking like they do now. However, the breadcrumb class is now being used for other things than just for breadcrumbs. For example, on the recent changes page, Nephele added some links to the page using the breadcrumb class. Reverting the breadcrumb class changes would mess these links up.

Therefore, I assume that most people either like the change in layout and that the change just took some getting used to, or are indifferent. Most likely a combination of the two. Just to make sure, I have opened this opportunity to discuss this for anyone who still opposes this. --Aristeo | Talk 12:17, 25 January 2007 (EST)

This probably should have been posted on the Bread crumb page, though I recognize there are arguments for posting it here. Anway, yes I think they should be reverted, though that may mean modifying Nephele's changes. If that's done and there are no objectsions, then the dispute is resolved, I think. If there's still debate over it, then discussion should be continued on the bread crumbs page -- when we have time -- which may be a while. I think that we're all busy with other projects.--Wrye 16:45, 25 January 2007 (EST)

I think most people are indifferent to a point where having a debate over this isn't worth anyone's time, which is good. Like you said, everyone is busy with other projects. --Aristeo | Talk 18:35, 25 January 2007 (EST)

I for one still prefer the new bread crumb style. I think it allows the bread crumbs to provide all the useful functionality (i.e., convenient navigation) without taking up a lot of valuable space at the top of the page. I think one factor limiting input to this discussion is that most editors don't know what the bread crumb trails are, let alone remember what they looked like before this change was implemented. So I've put together a demonstration of what a page looked like with the old-style breadcrumbs, at User:Nephele/Sandbox/3. I don't necessarily want to restart this debate, but I also don't want to see the changes reverted just because everyone assumes that nobody likes the new style.

As for the issue with the Recentchanges page, I don't really see it as a problem, and definitely should not have any bearing on the decision about the bread crumb style. It would be trivial to use a different style for the one line of text that I added to the Recentchanges page (and I think that's the only other page where I've made use of the breadcrumb style). --Nephele 15:42, 26 January 2007 (EST)

Ok, having looked at both now I much prefer the new style over the old, the old one just seems to take up space to me. Jadrax 18:28, 26 January 2007 (EST)

I wanted to see how many people support them, don't support them, or don't care. All of my assumptions have been false so far, so I'm glad I asked. ;) Right now there's no consensus, and I don't think there will be, so let's settle this dispute with a good ol' fashion plebiscite! I see one vote to revert the breadcrumbs back to the way they were and two votes to keep them the way they are.--Aristeo | Talk 19:48, 26 January 2007 (EST)

Outsetting The smaller text and arrows are fine with me. My main concerns are that it should: 1) be under the title line (otherwise, as I previously mentioned, there's a problem with with text collisions between the crumb trail and the title on some pages). Secondly, the crumb trail should be on the left side, not on the right -- the reason is that the crumb trail does pretty much the same thing as the "back" link does, and so the two control elements should be on the left side (for more reasons see the earlier comments). There was also discussion about getting rid of the "The UESP..." banner text which takes up precious space at the top of the page. I think that makes sense -- or it could be moved to the right side of the bread crumb trail line (and maybe the back page link line if that can be arranged). --Wrye 19:58, 26 January 2007 (EST)

I think Wrye has some good points, which should be addressed if possible. --Ratwar 20:03, 26 January 2007 (EST)

I think a vote should only be a last resort solution when trying to reach a consensus. And it seems to me like it should be possible in this case to find a solution that addresses everyone's concerns, instead of imposing the majority's preference. To address Wrye's comments:

• Re: placing the bread crumb under the title line. I have no problems with that. I'm pretty sure that the only reason it's now appearing above the line is that the addition of a Sitenotice shifted the rest of the page down one line, while the bread crumb's vertical position is fixed. I'd suggest we need to make a decision about whether or not we want to use the Sitenotice feature, and then figure out the appropriate vertical position for the bread crumbs, so that they are positioned below the line.
• Re: placing on the left. Placing the bread crumb trail where the tagline ("The UESPWiki...") currently is located works for me. That leaves the question of whether we want the tagline and, if so, where to place it. I have no particular preference in terms of keeping or deleting it. If we'd like to keep it, moving the tagline to the right margin should be pretty easy (for my own reference: the css id "siteSub" controls the tagline format). By "back page link line", I take it Wrye means, for example, the line that says "< Oblivion:Anga" on the page Oblivion:Anga/Description. With the current location of that back-link line, I don't see that it has to be moved (i.e., it wouldn't necessarily collide with a bread crumb trail placed on the left side of the page), but I don't have any objections to experimenting with its location (css id: "contentSub" or class "subpages").
• Arrows vs colons as the separator: as long as there's enough horizontal space in whichever location we choose, I'm OK with either. If we do opt to change the separator again, I would just like to suggest that we create a template, so that any future experiments only require a single change instead of 50 changes.

So, does anyone have any objections to moving the bread crumb to the position currently occupied by the tagline? Or any feedback on what to do with the sitenotice, tagline, or subpage back link? Hmmm... why does it seem like we may have solved one problem but created three new ones? :) --Nephele 03:07, 27 January 2007 (EST)

It seems moving the breadcrumb trail under the line, then swapping it's position with the Tagline would solve everyones concerns? Jadrax 06:56, 27 January 2007 (EST)

I removed the site notice, which seems to have an effect. --Aristeo | Talk 07:37, 27 January 2007 (EST)

When you said that you didn't think that restarting this discussion would work, I was under the impression that you didn't feel like the consensus process would work in this situation. I'm glad you changed your mind. As for the breadcrumbs, I'm fine with all of these suggestions. :) --Aristeo | Talk 07:37, 27 January 2007 (EST)