Breadcrumb Navigation - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets

Breadcrumb navigation helps the user to understand their location in the website by providing a breadcrumb trail back to the start page.

Links displayed inline with separators

Requirements

The items typically display inline with a separator to indicate a hierarchy between individual pages.

Recipe

Download this example

Note: The example above uses two selectors to insert content before every li except the first one. This could also be achieved using one selector only:

.breadcrumb li:not(:first-child)::before {
  content: "→";
}

This solution uses a more complex selector, but requires less rules. Feel free to choose the solution that you prefer.

Choices made

This pattern is laid out using a simple flex layout demonstrating how a line of CSS can give us our navigation. The separators are added using CSS Generated Content. You could change these to any separator that you like.

Accessibility concerns

I have used the aria-label and aria-current attributes to help users understand what this navigation is and where the current page is in the structure. See the related links for more information.

Browser compatibility

The various layout methods have different browser support. See the charts below for details on basic support for the properties used.

Flexbox

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
`flex`	Chrome Full support 29 Full support 29 Full support 21 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-	Edge Full support 12 Full support 12 Full support 12 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-	Firefox Full support 20 Notes Full support 20 Notes Notes Since Firefox 28, multi-line flexbox is supported. Notes Before Firefox 32, Firefox wasn't able to animate values starting or stopping at `0`. Notes Until Firefox 61, flex items that are sized according to their content are sized using `fit-content`, not `max-content`. No support 18 — 28 Disabled Disabled From version 18 until version 28 (exclusive): this feature is behind the `layout.css.flexbox.enabled` preference (needs to be set to `true`). To change preferences in Firefox, visit about:config. Full support 49 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit- Full support 48 Prefixed Disabled Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit- Disabled From version 48: this feature is behind the `layout.css.prefixes.webkit` preference (needs to be set to `true`). To change preferences in Firefox, visit about:config.	IE Full support 11 Notes Full support 11 Notes Notes Internet Explorer 11 ignores uses of `calc()` in the `flex-basis` part of the `flex` syntax. This can be worked around by using the longhand properties instead of the shorthand. See Flexbug #8 for more info. Notes Internet Explorer 11 considers a unitless value in the `flex-basis` part to be syntactically invalid (and will thus be ignored). A workaround is to always include a unit in the `flex-basis` part of the `flex` shorthand value. See Flexbug #4 for more info. Full support 10 Prefixed Notes Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -ms- Notes Internet Explorer 10 and 11 ignore uses of `calc()` in the `flex-basis` part of the `flex` syntax. This can be worked around by using the longhand properties instead of the shorthand. See Flexbug #8 for more info. Notes Internet Explorer 10 and 11 consider a unitless value in the `flex-basis` part to be syntactically invalid (and will thus be ignored). A workaround is to always include a unit in the `flex-basis` part of the `flex` shorthand value. See Flexbug #4 for more info.	Opera Full support 12.1	Safari Full support 9 Full support 9 Full support 6.1 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-	WebView Android Full support 4.4 Full support 4.4 Full support ≤37 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-	Chrome Android Full support 29 Full support 29 Full support 25 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-	Firefox Android Full support 20 Notes Full support 20 Notes Notes Since Firefox 28, multi-line flexbox is supported. Notes Before Firefox 32, Firefox wasn't able to animate values starting or stopping at `0`. Notes Until Firefox 61, flex items that are sized according to their content are sized using fit-content, not max-content. No support 18 — 28 Disabled Disabled From version 18 until version 28 (exclusive): this feature is behind the `layout.css.flexbox.enabled` preference (needs to be set to `true`). To change preferences in Firefox, visit about:config. Full support 49 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit- Full support 48 Prefixed Disabled Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit- Disabled From version 48: this feature is behind the `layout.css.prefixes.webkit` preference (needs to be set to `true`). To change preferences in Firefox, visit about:config.	Opera Android Full support 12.1	Safari iOS Full support 9 Full support 9 Full support 7 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-	Samsung Internet Android Full support 2.0 Full support 2.0 Full support 1.5 Prefixed Prefixed Implemented with the vendor prefix: -webkit-

Legend

Full support: Full support
See implementation notes.: See implementation notes.
User must explicitly enable this feature.: User must explicitly enable this feature.
Requires a vendor prefix or different name for use.: Requires a vendor prefix or different name for use.