Is this the expected behavior for breadcrumbs?

[amatsumoto]

I just noticed something about breadcrumbs. I thought that breadcrumbs were supposed to show your location in relation to the Help TOC/book structure the topic falls under, but that is not always the case

An example:
We have a topic titled "Preferences" that is saved in a Content Explorer folder named "Working with Annotations." In my project TOC, that topic is included two times. One time is under a "book" named "Setting Preferences" that is under another book called "The Interface." The second time is in a book called "Working with Annotations." When I check my WebHelp output and click on the topic listed under the "Setting Preferences" sub-book, the breadcrumbs show "Working with Annotations > Preferences." This is the same breadcrumb I get (and expect) when I click on the Preferences topic under the "Working with Annotations" book. Why is the breadcrumb right for one, but not the other?

I also notice that when I click on the TOC topic under the "Setting Preferences" sub-book that the "Working with Annotations" book expands too. If it is far enough down in the TOC, it jumps down and I lose track of where I was in the TOC. Does anyone know why?

[LTinker68]

Why is the breadcrumb right for one, but not the other?

Because you're referencing the same topic file (.htm), Flare jumps to the first instance to where that file is referenced in the TOC, so the breadcrumb is reflecting that location. The way around that is to put the content for that topic into a snippet file, then create two topic files. Insert the snippet into both topics, then put one topic in the "Setting Preferences" book and the second topic in the "Working with Annotations" book. When you click on the topic under the "Setting Preferences" book, that is what the breadcrumb trail will show. When you click on the topic under "Working with Annotations", that is what the breadcrumb will show. If you need to change the content, you just modify the snippet file to have it changed in both topic files.

I also notice that when I click on the TOC topic under the "Setting Preferences" sub-book that the "Working with Annotations" book expands too. If it is far enough down in the TOC, it jumps down and I lose track of where I was in the TOC. Does anyone know why?

Same reason as above. Since it's jumping to the first occurrence of the topic in the TOC, it's expanding the book where that topic is located, which is why the breadcrumb is wrong. Doing the steps above will fix that problem, too.

[NorthEast]

Just to add to LTinker's response, the breadcrumbs are not displayed on-the-fly by the WebHelp, the breadcrumb links are added into the topic itself during the build - so you can only have a single breadcrumb path per topic.

As this issue crops up in the forums quite often, it's perhaps a limitation that should be noted in the help, or maybe even a warning note in the build if you're using breadcrumbs and there are duplicate topics in the TOC.