UX Provide breadcrumbs related to content

[Andreas.rindler]

Why we need it The purpose of this capability is to help a user navigate through the site and look for articles that are of common categories. There are 3 things we have today that are important here as it relates to the wiki.

1. Go to here for an example:  http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/Data_Warehousing_Solution_Offering
   
2. Has a right-hand navigation infobox that is manually created by user.
   
3. Has categories at the bottom of the page. Added by a user.
   
4. If you click on categories, it takes you to here:

 http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/Category:Data_Warehousing

You can see all articles that use this category and also bookmarks that use the same

Key Design Questions

1. How can help users understand "where they are"?
   
2. Do we want to have any linkages between content in different components or should it only be through the wiki?
   
3. Should breadcrumbs be along the top of the page, within the wiki article or down the right hand nav?
   
4. Should categories can moved outside the wiki (inner skin) and put along the outside right nav?
   
5. Will traditional breadcrumbs work for a wiki with lots of categories?
   
6. Do we need anything more than we already have today?
   
7. How can better navigation help drive contribution?
   

We can show multiple versions, but want to make sure its not confusing for the user :

For an example of a go to:
 http://wiki.ljackson.us/MediaWiki_BreadCrumbs
For an example of b go to:
 http://www.leerwiki.nl/How_to_create_breadcrumb_with_Mediawiki
For an example of c go to: [BR]]  http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Breadcrumb_navigation

See some additional options here:
 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryBreadcrumb

 http://www.leerwiki.nl/Hoofdpagina Is quite a nice site. We could get some good ideas from here for how we present solution areas.

2. I have installed both options in a new branch on waterloo.

Option b is not showing the full path of categories. Do you think this is because it was build for an older version of MediaWiki??

A more sophisticated approach is option b:  http://www.ehartwell.com/InfoDabble/BreadCrumbs2

3. Do you think that breadcrumbs should be shown in the "inner skin" of the wiki or have it as part of the overall site? Kevin, I will send some additional info here based on the results of our UX review.
   

[Xiping.Wang]

Just add a page trail based breadcrumbs.

[Andreas.rindler]

I like  http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Breadcrumb_navigation and  http://www.ehartwell.com/InfoDabble/BreadCrumbs2. Have to test how it works. Estimate of 24h should be right (4-8h research, install, analysis etc; 8-12h development, CSS design/dev; 4h test, fixing, release)