David Poehlman wrote:
yes, but if done right, they plot history.
I disagree. Plotting history during general surfing is unnecessary since, unlike site structure, browsing history and back buttons are a nearly universal browser features. Breadcrumbs indicate where you in the hierarchy and the levels above. Because breadcrumbs are just links, their visited/unvisited status (managed and displayed by the browser, and sometimes read by screen readers) also indicates which of those levels you've already visited.
If you're in some sort of multipage form flow in a web application, it's a good idea to indicate the different stages you've passed through and the further stages you're going to pass through. But I wouldn't call that "breadcrumbs".
-- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
