Clickable breadcrumbs.

[admin]

I was revisiting breadcrumbs for various softwares. The scrollbar in Windows Explorer isn't the best approach, as it only utilises a part of the screen.

My folder layout is usually very few folders (no scrollbar required) or too many folders. Would showing multiple menu's be better than the scrollbar based approach. This would allow a compact listing of all subfolders.

What do you mean by multiple menus? Side by side?

And I think if you have 1000 folders, you will hit the wall with any scrollbar-less approach.

[Enternal]

I was revisiting breadcrumbs for various softwares. The scrollbar in Windows Explorer isn't the best approach, as it only utilises a part of the screen.

My folder layout is usually very few folders (no scrollbar required) or too many folders. Would showing multiple menu's be better than the scrollbar based approach. This would allow a compact listing of all subfolders.

What do you mean by multiple menus? Side by side?

And I think if you have 1000 folders, you will hit the wall with any scrollbar-less approach.

Lol! You beat me to it. But exactly the problem will be once you have more folders that what the listing could display at once. So perhaps a percentage of the screen is what the solution could be.

[admin]

There is one issue though. If the folder happens to have "." in the name such as "This.Is.A.Folder", the folder icon does not display next to it unlike the other regular folders.

No problem here. You mean the icon in the breadcrumb bar?

[nerdweed]

I was revisiting breadcrumbs for various softwares. The scrollbar in Windows Explorer isn't the best approach, as it only utilises a part of the screen.

My folder layout is usually very few folders (no scrollbar required) or too many folders. Would showing multiple menu's be better than the scrollbar based approach. This would allow a compact listing of all subfolders.

What do you mean by multiple menus? Side by side?

And I think if you have 1000 folders, you will hit the wall with any scrollbar-less approach.

Yes, I meant side by side - multi columned

If the wall his hit, break through the wall to see the remaining folders . So no need to show the other folders.

The number of such folders wouldn't be high and such folders can be navigated in the traditional style. But for folders which have more folders than that can fit on a single column, (somewhere around 3 columns of folders), there won't be a need to scroll and hence quicker.

[Enternal]

There is one issue though. If the folder happens to have "." in the name such as "This.Is.A.Folder", the folder icon does not display next to it unlike the other regular folders.

No problem here. You mean the icon in the breadcrumb bar?

Yes I mean the icon in the breadcrumb bar.

EDIT: It has problems over network locations. Works perfectly for local.

194.jpg (110.14 KiB) Viewed 1817 times

[jcmn]

Perhaps searching in the popup list of folders could be done using the find as you type approach?

[admin]

EDIT: It has problems over network locations. Works perfectly for local.

Wow, indeed! The bug is already present in the address bar dropdown as well! Cool, I love those bugs.

[binocular222]

When I click the folder icon here, nothing happen. I expect it would be a Computer icon and will bring me to My computer accordingly

Untitled20131017172754.png (45.65 KiB) Viewed 1799 times

[admin]

No, it's the icon of the current path. No click event decided yet. Actually I think it's good to have a place where you can click without anything happening. You can use it to move the inactive pane to focus.

[binocular222]

1) Following the hierarchy, that icon should be either My Computer or My Network (that would be more useful too)
2) Right click on each crum: should be standard right click on folder, leave the options triangle/slash to main F9 dialog
btw, bravo the "Show Downward Paths", excellent idea indeed

[Filehero]

We should continue here.

After being reluctant for a long time I'm now a converted: Breadcrumbs rock. I will never switch them off again.

Yes, it is astounding how much easier it gets, when the basic navigation options are right below the tab (or right above the area my mouse pointer resides most of the time). Lesson: We yet haven't pushed enough.

Of course, I need a more time with it, but maybe I won't need the tree anymore for "daily" file management.

BTW, is the current BC font size the minimum one?


Cheers,
Filehero

[admin]

BTW, is the current BC font size the minimum one?

Yes, I opted to hard-code a minimal font size of 9.75 because everything smaller just looked too small for this thing.

Why you asking?

[TheQwerty]

I'm honestly not trying to jump the gun here.. but I felt it necessary to really take a closer look at WE's breadcrumb.
Sorry about the length - I wanted to illustrate some of the finer, and possibly less-noticed, aspects in their implementation.
It's dangerous to go alone. Take this!



Usability thoughts from the Win 7 WE breadcrumb...

1. When clicking an arrow the focused folder, whose children are being listed, adopts the pressed state - this is a great visual aid in helping the user understand where the items in the displayed list reside.
2. After clicking an arrow to display the drop-down list, the breadcrumbs behave similarly to the application's main menu in that the displayed drop-down list changes when the user hovers the mouse cursor over a different level or category. This is a time-saver - especially when the user's first arrow selection is the wrong one.
3. Combining the previous two items... The WE breadcrumb requires clicking on the arrow to initially show the drop-down list, but because after that the focused folder acts like the arrow itself the user only needs to hover over a different level instead of an arrow and its much smaller target area to change drop-down lists.
4. By using F6 it is possible for keyboard users to focus the breadcrumb, use left/right to select a level, down to show drop-down list, Esc to hide it, and Enter to browse to the selected location. The user can focus an item using type-ahead find, but a selection is never automatically made which is probably due to the fact they use a list control for the drop-down list.

However WE's implementation also has shortcomings that maybe you can improve upon...

1. If the list cannot fit on the screen it is drawn over top of the breadcrumb, making it impossible to do many of those nice things above, like hover over what is now underneath the drop-down list. I'm not sure how XY could improve upon this aspect of things - maybe introduce the revolutionary Vertical Breadcrumb where this wouldn't be an issue?
2. Once the drop-down list is shown and focused the user must use Esc to close it before they can change levels. This doesn't make much sense to me since left/right don't seem to do anything when browsing the drop-down list.

Brainstorm... or brain fart?

1. If you don't much care for the hovering aspect, and feel a click to hide the menu to reach right-of-focus levels is acceptable, then I wonder if it would make sense to attempt to position the menu such that the default menu item falls near where it is on the breadcrumb, as shown below. This way the user's cursor is closer to the current item instead of the lexicographically first item. For me this makes sense because I am often jumping to folders near the current one. I realize this type of positioning may be a bit too exotic and to be perfectly honest I feel the hovering is a much better feature when it comes to usability, but I'm just throwing this out there.

   

   Imaging that the user has just clicked the arrow to the right of 'A'.

   breadcrumb-side-menu.png (30.08 KiB) Viewed 1763 times

Congratulations on making it to the end!

[Filehero]

Why you asking?

All my fonts are 8,25. So there's a little disharmony in the dimensions/visual impact. Maybe it's rather due to the bold font. But look can wait.


Cheers,
Filehero

[j_c_hallgren]

So there's a little disharmony in the dimensions/visual impact. Maybe it's rather due to the bold font.

Agree on the BOLD -- right now, it jumps out at me and screams: LOOK AT ME! That, combined with the blue background makes it the most obvious thing on screen...I agree, looks can wait...but for now, I have to have it off to not get distracted.

BTW, if I had my choice, I'd give it the 'golden stripe' to give it some visibility but keep it gray like tab headers.