[development] breadcrumbs

[Jeremy Epstein]

On 1/28/07, Dries Buytaert <dries.buytaert at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd prefer to postpone this discussion until CVS HEAD is back in a
> working state that we're all familiar with, and that is (mostly)
> backward compatible with regard to breadcrumbs.  Yep, I want the new
> breadcrumb behavior to act _exactly_ like the old/current system in
> Drupal 5.  By default, the breadcrumb should follow the menu
> structure, IMO.  When a page does not correspond with a menu item,
> there is no breadcrumb, or the breadcrumb can still be set using
> drupal_set_breadcrumb().

I agree with Dries on this one. My view has always been that "the menu
hierarchy" is the one-and-only logical reference model for Drupal's
navigation system. All of the various navigational elements on a site
- e.g. side-block nav menus, breadcrumbs, pri/sec links, TOC links,
prev/next/up page links - should merely be visual representations of
this single logical reference model. If any of these visual elements
are inconsistent with each other, that merely serves to confuse the
user, and to blur the site's hierarchy.

Navigational aids that aren't tied to the menu system have their place
- e.g. in 'related links' blocks, in taxonomy tag links, in links to
anchors on the same page, etc. But breadcrumbs do not fall into this
category.

The menu structure in Drupal 5.x works as follows: by default, menu
parents are determined by their system path - e.g. node/123 yields
'home > node > 123'; but this is overridden if the menu item is given
a different parent on the 'admin/build/menu' page by the administrator
- e.g. 'home > our work > manufacturing > plastics (node 123)'. This,
in turn, _can_ also be overridden by menu_set_location() (or, even
worse, by drupal_set_breadcrumb()), but personally, I've always
considered that to be a hack, as it generally defeats the whole
purpose of letting the _user_ decide where they want their menu items
to go, and what they want their breadcrumbs to look like.

I too would like to see this remain as the default way of determining
breadcrumbs. But a better API for overriding this behaviour would
certainly be welcome as well.

Cheers,
Jaza.