What a great showcase of chocolate websites is posted on smashing magazine.com

Here is the great article about how photography sells your product.

So my cousin who lives in Moscow, Russia is doing virtual tours of famous places such as bars, restaurants, arenas, and etc. This stuff is so COOL! It is hard to believe that we don’t see something similar to this in the United States. Please correct me if I am wrong here. The closest that I have seen was a satellite Google map.

So here are some examples of his work!

Restaurant Terassa

Restaurant “Red Square”

Please share your thoughts on how popular you think this stuff will become in the US.

Download Free Theme here

Contact forms.

Here is a great article on web design in Russia. Check it out!

Article

Websiteoutlook.com and Mywebsiteworth.com

Great article on Google products.

Read it here

What is a breadcrumb?

A “breadcrumb” (or “breadcrumb trail”) is a type of secondary navigation scheme that reveals the user’s location in a website or Web application. The term comes from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale in which the two title children drop breadcrumbs to form a trail back to their home. Just like in the tale, breadcrumbs in real-world applications offer users a way to trace the path back to their original landing point.

You can usually find breadcrumbs in websites that have a large amount of content organized in a hierarchical manner. You also see them in Web applications that have more than one step, where they function similar to a progress bar. In their simplest form, breadcrumbs are horizontally arranged text links separated by the “greater than” symbol (>); the symbol indicates the level of that page relative to the page links beside it.

When Should You Use Breadcrumbs?

Use breadcrumb navigation for large websites and websites that have hierarchically arranged pages. An excellent scenario is e-commerce websites, in which a large variety of products is grouped into logical categories.

You shouldn’t use breadcrumbs for single-level websites that have no logical hierarchy or grouping. A great way to determine if a website would benefit from breadcrumb navigation is to construct a site map or a diagram representing the website’s navigation architecture, and then analyze whether breadcrumbs would improve the user’s ability to navigate within and between categories.

Breadcrumb navigation should be regarded as an extra feature and shouldn’t replace effective primary navigation menus. It’s a convenience feature; a secondary navigation scheme that allows users to establish where they are; and an alternative way to navigate around your website.

Types of Breadcrumbs

There are three main types of breadcrumbs.

Location-based
Location-based breadcrumbs show the user where they are in the website’s hierarchy. They are typically used for navigation schemes that have multiple levels (usually more than two levels).

Attribute-based
Attribute-based breadcrumb trails display the attributes of a particular page.

Path-based
Path-based breadcrumb trails show users the steps they’ve taken to arrive at a particular page. Path-based breadcrumbs are dynamic in that they display the pages the user has visited before arriving on the current page.

Benefits of Using Breadcrumbs

Here are just some of the benefits of using a breadcrumb trail.

Convenient for users
Breadcrumbs are used primarily to give users a secondary means of navigating a website. By offering a breadcrumb trail for all pages on a large multi-level website, users can navigate to higher-level categories more easily.

Reduces clicks or actions to return to higher-level pages
Instead of using the browser’s “Back” button or the website’s primary navigation to return to a higher-level page, users can now use the breadcrumbs with a fewer number of clicks.

Doesn’t usually hog screen space
Because they’re typically horizontally oriented and plainly styled, breadcrumb trails don’t take up a lot of space on the page. The benefit is that they have little to no negative impact in terms of content overload, and they outweigh any negatives if used properly.

Reduces bounce rates
Breadcrumb trails can be a great way to entice first-time visitors to peruse a website after having viewed the landing page. For example, say a user arrives on a page through a Google search, seeing a breadcrumb trail may tempt that user to click to higher-level pages to view related topics of interests. This, in turn, reduces the overall website bounce rate.

Breadcrumb Navigation Design Considerations

When designing a breadcrumb navigation scheme, keep several things in mind. Let’s take a look at some questions that might arise when you’re working with breadcrumbs.

What should be used to separate link items?
The commonly accepted and most recognizable symbol for separating hyperlinks in breadcrumb trails is the “greater than” symbol (>). Typically, the > sign is used to denote hierarchy, as in the format of Parent category > Child category.

Other symbols used are arrows pointing to the right, right angle quotation marks (») and slashes (/).

The choice depends on the aesthetics of the website and the type of breadcrumb used. For example, for path-based breadcrumbs in which the links do not necessarily have a hierarchical relationship to each other, using a “greater than” symbol may not convey their relationship accurately.

How big should it be?
You don’t want your breadcrumbs to dominate the page. A breadcrumb trail functions merely as an aid to users (a convenience); its size should convey this to users and thus should at least be smaller, or less prominent, than the primary navigation menu.

A good rule of thumb to follow when sizing your breadcrumb trail is that it shouldn’t be the first item that grabs the user’s attention when arriving on a page.

Where should breadcrumbs be located?
Breadcrumb trails are usually displayed in the top half of the page, below the primary navigation menu if a horizontal menu layout is used.

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