Question

I’m working on a site where we need “dynamic” breadcrumb generation.

Pages within this application are not specific children of the other, so when the user is browsing one of them, I can’t simply retrace steps back up.

I could have the following breadcrumbs-like lists: (updated)
* inbox > message > user profile
* search results > user profile
* search results > user profile > new message

( FYI; there will be a few dedicated parent pages that will reset the whole stack. Also there will be a check that prevents recursion. )

So… To accomplish this, I have to remember where the user has been, and in what order. I reckon the most elegant and reliable way to do is, is write a mechanism that remembers the user’s history in the session.

If I do that though, the whole thing will break when a user opens a new browser window or tab.

To fix that, I could store this data in the querystring. Though different browsers/proxies have different limits of data that can be transferred that way. So, one day, this will probably break as well.

Does anyone have an idea on how to implement this?

Or;

Does anyone know how to reliably identify different browsers windows?

(I’d rather not rely on javascript for this, unless it’s my only workable option. I use dojo toolkit for the frontend)

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

window.name survives a new document load. So you can write a history string to window.name and then read it back from the next page, or use a generated name as a key for storing window-specific cookies/sessions.

I don’t think this is a good idea though. “Breadcrumbs” are traditionally a hierarchical navigation device, not a history list. The browser already provides a perfectly good history list on the back/forward buttons that it is not useful to reproduce on the page; presenting an on-page history list, especially in a format that is normally a hierarchical place marker, is more likely to confuse users than to be of any help.