Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Here at the SF redesign implementation sprint, I just tried turning on bluecheese on my local project* test site on my laptop. I quickly found there's no breadcrumbs anywhere in the theme. This will potentially cause problems for a lot of pages related to projects:
A) The "view all releases" page for each project
- Start at http://drupal.org/project/drupal
- Click on "View all releases" under the download table: http://drupal.org/node/3060/release
- With bluecheese enabled, there's no way to get back to the project page. (Yes, I know this is current broken -- see #358563: Breadcrumb broken for node/N/release view -- but even if I fix that, it's going to be meaningless with bluecheese).
B) View the issue queue for a project:
- Start at http://drupal.org/project/drupal
- Click on "View all issues": http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal?status=All
- Currently, the breadcrumb is the only way to get you back to the project page.
C) View any issue for a project:
- Click on any issue link anywhere on the site, e.g. #358563: Breadcrumb broken for node/N/release view
- Currently, the breadcrumb gets you back to both the issue queue for that project, and, one level up in the breadcrumb, to the project page itself.
D) View any release for a project:
- For example, start at http://drupal.org/project/drupal
- Click on the "Release notes" or "6.10" link in the download table and end up at the drupal 6.10 release page
- Currently, the breadcrumb is the only way to get back to the project page, or the list of all releases for this project
...
Comments
Comment #1
dwwBetter tags, sorry.
Comment #2
dwwTo further complicate things, there are cases in project* that aren't a clear hierarchy. Therefore, breadcrumbs are hard since we don't know what path you came from and which path you want to get back to. :( For example, compare these two scenarios:
Scenario (B) from my original post (with more details about the current breadcrumb behavior):
- Start on the Drupal core "home page": http://drupal.org/project/drupal
- Breadcrumb here is "Home » Download » Drupal project" (since you got here by clicking on the "Download" tab, and drilling down to core).
- Now, click on the View open issues or create one link at the top of the "Support" section of links (for now -- this is moving to a block as soon as I deploy #425728: Add an "issue cockpit" block for project nodes -- but where this link lives on the project doesn't change the IA problem I'm illustrating).
- Brings you to the issue queue for that project: http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal.
- The breadcrumb here is "Home » Download » Drupal project » Drupal" (so you can get back to the "Drupal" page you were just looking at).
There are a few rough spots here, but it gets really nasty when you compare with this alternate scenario:
E) Start on any page on drupal.org when you're logged in, and click the first link in the navigation menu: Issues
- You land on http://drupal.org/project/issues -- all issues for all projects on the site, ordered by most recent activity. The breadcrumb here brings you back to "Home".
- Nearly always, "Drupal" is going to have issues near the top of that list (since the core queue is the most active), so click any Drupal link in the first column ("Project").
- You land on http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal -- the issue queue specifically for Drupal core. The breadcrumb here is:
"Home » Download » Drupal project » Drupal" (see scenario B)...
Ugh. So, what should the breadcrumb be when you're viewing the issue queue for a specific project? Should it bring you back to that project's page, or back to the global issue queue? Really, there should be ways to get to either one. Generally, I think it's more important to be able to get back to the project page, since honestly, the site-wide issue queue isn't all that useful a page (which makes perfect sense that it's the top link in the navigation menu). ;)
It gets worse if you click on "Advanced search" anywhere -- in some cases, there's already no way to get back where you just were...
This problem has plagued other project-related things like the detailed usage statistics pages. For the interested reader:
#165380: Make usage statistics visible (ugh -- painful issue, beware)
Summary: we failed to deploy this this cool feature for over a year mostly since we never had a clear plan on how people would find and navigate through the data (and because other things kept being more important). There are pages specific for projects, and summary pages across all projects. How should you navigate these, drill down, and how do the breadcrumbs behave? There's really no good answer, so we couldn't plow ahead.
#325444: Make usage statistics EVEN MORE visible
#326098: Add a link back to the release node when viewing usage stats for a release
(Follow-up attempts to incrementally improve things once the original monster went live).
This is a general problem. It's only going to get worse as we add more detailed project metrics. So long as there's something you want to see site-wide across all projects, and drill-down to see the details for each project, you're going to land on a page that doesn't know where it belongs. Is this a child of the site-wide drill-down, or is this a detail page under a given project? You'll always have people find this page from both starting points.
Help! ;)
Thanks,
-Derek
Comment #3
gábor hojtsyBreadcrumbs were discussed in Drupalcon DC with the designers and Mark. Mark said he does not like them, as he sees them just making up for otherwise lousy navigation. We pointed him to project issue queues and such where the breadcrumb is a vital tool to get back to the project page and navigate elsewhere. He agreed that breadcrumbs might have a place on some parts of the site, but not as a general tool. (I am just communicating what he said at the discussion).
Comment #4
leisareichelt commentedas discussed with dww on IRC earlier I wanted to confirm our position on breadcrumbs which is that the main reason that we haven't included them in the design is that in the sections that we have given significant thought to they weren't necessary - however we do agree that there is probably a need for them (or something similar) in both the project and documentation sections of the site. We want to be able to think through their implementation properly, which we haven't been able to so far - I believe (TBC) that we will have some time to look into this in the coming weeks - so if you're able to wait a while for further direction, we will have some for you soon!
hope this helps - let me know if there's anything further/any questions etc.
Comment #5
alex ua commentedI'm just changing the status on this to reflect the last comment from leisareichelt .
Comment #6
dwwI don't think there's any other information to provide before Leisa and Mark can work on this. We're just waiting for them to have time to review/discuss this, and provide an answer. Maybe "postponed" is appropriate if they don't have time now, but it's not specifically blocked on any external factor other than time. Plenty of "active" issues are blocked on someone having time to work on them. ;)
Comment #7
lisarex commentedMoving to the Blue Cheese project
Comment #8
drummWhen drupalorg_crosssite is doing it's job, we know that we are on Drupal Core, Modules, Themes, etc. But we don't know which project we are on.
1. API for getting the project node
2. Use it for crossite nav
3. Add a link toward the top, next to the release/issue title, etc
Comment #9
drummWill be visibly done when #898742: Use API for term path in breadcrumb is committed and makes its way to Drupal.org.