Hi Johan, I usually argue to include breadcrumb trails, since they don't take up much space and those who do use them find them useful. Also, they're useful for very complex sites that have more levels than can be normally displayed at once in a left hand navigation.
It doesn't sound like your site has that many levels, so if they duplicate each other exactly and the site's a fairly simple one, then you can probably be OK without them. I just wonder what kind of design treatment they are getting where they take up 10% of the depth of the screen. Most breadcrumb trails are designed in a small font and don't really increase the amount of scrolling. As much as I disagree with him on other issues, Nielsen has a pretty good article about the use of breadcrumbs and why they're good to add: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/breadcrumbs.html As usual, a lot of what he says is somewhat obvious, but I thought it was interesting that he said that users were starting to look for breadcrumbs and that Vista uses them, so users will start to expect them more and more. Renée On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:40 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hello, > > A website has a left navigation and a bread crumb. The left navigation is > an exact copy of the bread crumb (or the other way around). They both take > up valuable real estate on the screen. > > My idea would be to do away with the bread crumb because the visitor sees > at any moment where exactly (s)he is in the website in the left navigation. > By eliminating the bread crumb, the amount of "real content" would increase > by 10% and people would have to scroll less and less frequently. > > Do you guys agree? > > Thanks in advance. > > Johan > **** DISCLAIMER **** > http://www.belgacom.be/maildisclaimer > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- Renée Rosen-Wakeford [email protected] Twitter: @lilitu93 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
