User:Ccsmith/sandbox

=Breadcrumb Trails= FamilySearch Wiki:Manual of Style

What is a breadcrumb trail?

 * It is a term that comes from the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. It is a story of two children who break off pieces of bread to leave a trail they can follow to get back home as they travel into a dark forest.
 * Breadcrumb trail consist of links that show where a user’s location in a website that has a hierarchical order structure.
 * In other words, if the page you are on has a breadcrumb trail, it shows you how to get back to the original article that was your starting point.
 * Breadcrumb trails are usually at the top of an article in FamilySearch Wiki.

Breadcrumb trail or the Back button?

 * One of the real useful things about breadcrumb trails is that you may have come to the page from somewhere else that has nothing to do with it. You could have come upon it by chance.  If the subject is something of which you want to learn more, you know that clicking the back button will not lead you to more articles of the same subject, after all you came there by chance.  To find other articles on this subject you will have to type something in the search field and hope it will reveal more articles on this subject.
 * If you see that a breadcrumb trail you can now go to the page that may have been the article which this is an offshoot. Again you don’t have to type something in the search box, the breadcrumb trail does that already for you.
 * Breadcrumb trails show a hierarchical site structure. You can see the other pages that come before the page they came from.
 * The back button will not help you here. It will just take you back to the page you came from which may have not have had anything to do with the page you are now on.  The breadcrumb trail lets you see where this page came from whereas the back button will not.

Breadcrumb Example
Ireland Counties of Ireland  County Antrim  Aghagallon, Antrim. Here is the link to: Aghagallon,_Antrim
 * Here is an example of a breadcrumb trail for an Irish parish:
 * Notice the hierarchy of this breadcrumb trail:
 * Country > List of Counties > County > Parish. It goes from the largest entity to the smallest.
 * For a city in the United States:
 * United States of America > List of States > State > List of Counties > Counties > List of Cities > City.


 * The above examples are both examples of hierarchical order.

How to code a Breadcrumb Trail
Here's how the breadcrumb trail looks in Wikitext: Ireland Counties of Ireland  County Antrim.

Let’s look at the parts of the breadcrumb trail.
 *  Ireland . The first set of   shows the first page of the hierarchical order of articles.  Ireland is the first page of the order. (The double brackets indicate an article within FamilySearch Wiki, not a link to an article outside of the wiki which has only a single set of brackets [ ].)
 *  [[Image:Gotoarrow.png]] . Next comes an arrow pointing to the next article in this hierarchical order.  Notice that it is an image not a link to another article.  You can use a greater than sign: ">" if you want.
 *  Counties of Ireland . The arrow is pointing to the next article in  s.  It is a link for the article “Counties of Ireland.”
 *  [[Image:Gotoarrow.png]] . Another image of an arrow.
 *  County Antrim . This arrow is point to a link to the next article in  : “County Antrim.”
 *  [[Image:Gotoarrow.png]] . Then another image of an arrow.
 *  .  The last set of   is the page you are on.  However rather than having to type the name of the page between these brackets, you can use the template:    inside the last set of double brackets.  That will type the name of the article you are on automatically.
 * You might have noticed the '' before Ireland}} and after [[County Antrim. This codes the breadcrumb trail to be italicized.  Some editors like the breadcrumb in italics except for the name of the page you are on.  However, you are free to use another style if you like.

Advantages of Breadcrumbs

 * You can see where the idea for this article came from. What was the starting subject.
 * You can go to any of the articles in this breadcrumb trail. You are not limited to the starting subject.
 * You can easily add other articles in the breadcrumb trail.
 * Last but not least you can see where an intermediate article placed in the breadcrumb trail might be helpful to the patron.