Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede comes with a very handy Breadcrumbs Navigator which creates a breadcrumb above the source code editor. To open it, right click on the Java Editor and choose “Show in Breadcrumb”. Or simply toggle this navigator with the toolbar button:

For those of you who are unaware of what breadcrumbs do, it is navigation aid used in user interfaces. The term breadcrumbs comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretal in the famous fairytale. It is a method for users to keep track of their locations in programs or documents. They really aid in user friendliness of a programme.


A similar tool is used on sites like Gumtree, lets say you are looking for free stuff on Gumtree, the site will uses breadcrumbs to help make it easier for you to navigate around it. It’s simpler to find where you have been and where you are going. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the page you are on now. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point.